How high can you jump? Children's Perception of Affordances for Self and Others with Different Abilities

The current study investigated whether children and adults can distinguish between actions they are afforded and those afforded to an actor. Participants judged the maximum height they could reach while jumping and they judged the maximum height that the actor could reach while jumping. They did so with and without a weighted backpack, and they did so with and without walking several laps. Results show that before the addition of the weighted backpack, participants rated the actor’s abilities as much closer to their own. While wearing the weighted backpack and then walking with it, participants’ estimates decreased for themselves, but remained mostly unchanged for the adult.