Abstract
In this paper we outline a framework for the study of the mechanisms involved in
the engagement of human agents with cultural affordances. Our aim is to better
understand how culture and context interact with human biology to shape human
behavior, cognition, and experience. We attempt to integrate several related approaches
in the study of the embodied, cognitive, and affective substrates of sociality and
culture and the sociocultural scaffolding of experience. The integrative framework we
propose bridges cognitive and social sciences to provide (i) an expanded concept
of ‘affordance’ that extends to sociocultural forms of life, and (ii) a multilevel account
of the socioculturally scaffolded forms of affordance learning and the transmission of
affordances in patterned sociocultural practices and regimes of shared attention. This
framework provides an account of how cultural content and normative practices are built
on a foundation of contentless basic mental processes that acquire content through
immersive participation of the agent in social practices that regulate joint attention and
shared intentionality