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Klaus B. Baerentsen

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Klaus Bærentsen is associate professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Aarhus. His research area concerns human consciousness in a broad sense, encompassing evolution, cultural history and ongoing individual life activity, as well as the brain activity supporting conscious experience. His main theoretical inspirations stems from a combination of the Russian theory of Activity and Cultural Historical Psychology, Ecological Psychology and Dynamic Systems Theory. His PhD thesis Humans and Technology in History reported empirical investigations of marine engineers controlling power plants representing three different generations of automatic control systems. It also contained a theoretical analysis of the development of automatic machines by objectification of human manual and cognitive operations. After working in industry for a number of years (Bang & Olufsen, Grundfoss) he returned to the University, at the MR Ressearch Centre at Aarhus Univesity Hospital in Skejby, and subsequently changed position to the Department of Psychology, in order to teach cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

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Publications by Klaus B. Baerentsen (bibliography)

2012

Baerentsen, Klaus B. (2012). Commentary on 'Activity Theory' by Victor Kaptelinin

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Baerentsen, Klaus B., Soegaard, Mads and Holstein-Rathlou, Allan (2012). Copy Edit and General Edit of: Activity Theory by Kaptelinin, Victor

2002

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Baerentsen, Klaus B. and Trettvik, Johan (2002): An activity theory approach to affordance. In: Proceedings of the Second Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction October 19-23, 2002, Aarhus, Denmark. pp. 51-60.

“The concept of affordance was introduced to the field of HCI as a means to enhance the understandability and usability of artifacts and especially their user interface. The results have however not been entirely convincing. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the concept of affordance coined by James J. Gibson. The concept of affordance was meant to cut through the subjective-objective dichotomy of traditional psychology and philosophy, but its interpretation in HCI has often retained this dichotomy. We argue, that at least some of the misunderstanding of the concept is caused by the fact that Gibson focused mainly on the perceptual side of the concept, leaving the activity of the organism as a largely implicit precondition. We suggest that this shortcoming have significant consequences, but that they can be overcome by employing the concepts for activity and consciousness found in the Russian activity theory as a frame of reference for the concept of affordance.”

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