Functional Object-Oriented Network: Construction & Expansion

There has been a recent boon in studies regarding the importance of the theory of affordances [1] in learning and understanding behaviour in human activities. Studies in neuroscience and cognitive science on object affordances indicate that the mirror neurons in human brains congregate visual and motor responses [2], [3], [4]. Mirror neurons in the F5 sector of the macaque ventral pre-motor cortex fire during both observation of interacting with an object and action execution, but do not discharge in response to simply observing an object [5], [6]. Further studies [7] show the functional relationship between paired objects and compared it with the spatial relationship and found that both the position and functional context are important and related to the motion; however, the motor action response was faster and more accurate with the functional context than with the spatial context. Yoon et al. [8] recently studied affordances associated to pairs of objects positioned for action and found an interesting so-called "paired object affordance effect", where the response time by right-handed participants was faster if the two objects were used together, where the active (manipulated) object was to the right of the other. From these studies, it is clear that functional relationships between objects are directly associated with motor actions. This interesting phenomenon can be observed in human daily life: when humans are performing tasks, they not only pay attention to objects and their states but also to object interactions caused by manipulation.