Action-specific perception

  Jessica Witt has a 2011 review article dealing with her "action-specific perception account." It presents a line of work that is a very important extension of Gibson, whom she centrally acknowledges.  She and colleagues have shown in a dozen or more publications, usually with several studies each, that action potential affects an actor’s perception of the situation.
  When you are hitting well, the softball is, in fact, judged larger. When you have been field-goal kicking well, the goal posts look nearer – but not before you’ve kicked.  When you have a reaching tool, out of reach objects seem closer.  When you have had a sugar energy drink, hills seem less steep (but less so if the drink was artificially sweetened, even though subjects couldn’t detect the chemical difference !).  A hammer placed conveniently for gripping looks closer than one placed at an equal distance but an angle less convenient to the gripping hand.  
   She reports several studies that rebut the objection that the results could be biases in the process of making and reporting a judgment, rather than the underlying perception itself.
   She tells an evolutionary advantage (aka «just-so») story, in this case, better distance adjustment in hunting.  But this bypasses what seems to me the MUCH LARGER  Gibsonian implication: seeing everything in terms of its action possibilities relative to the momentary state leaves an organism continuously action-ready. That should have very large benefits even if the implicit logic of the readiness «assessments» is fairly crude.  (doi: 10.1177/0963721411408770 )