Programming tool-use actions.

Abstract

When humans plan to execute a tool-use action, they can only specify the bodily movement parameters by taking into account the external target or goal of the tool-use action and the target-movement mapping implemented by the tool. In this study, the authors used the movement precuing method to investigate how people prepare for actions made with tools. More specifically, they asked whether people would be able to specify the spatial target and the target-movement mapping of the tool-use action independently of each other, and to what degree they would be able to prepare these components in advance. In 3 experiments, they precued either the target or the target-movement mapping of tool-use actions involving either a compatible or an incompatible target-movement mapping. Results indicate that participants benefit from partial advance information about the target-movement mapping, whereas no significant effects were found for precuing the spatial target of the action. These results occurred regardless of whether the target-movement mapping was compatible or incompatible and provide evidence for the notion that the target-movement mapping of a tool-use action is part of its cognitive representation.

Stroking me softly: Body-related effects in effect-based action control

“…Moreover, body-related effects seem to be used mainly when they are a relevant feature of the current task (please note that the abovementioned interpretation in terms of tool transformations also applies to Exps. 3 and 4, since similar precueing effects have been reported with tool-use actions; Massen & Prinz, 2007). This finding is in line with work on bimanual coordination Kunde & Weigelt, 2005;Mechsner et al, 2001;Mechsner & Knoblich, 2004) that has shown a stable advantage for coordinating actions that produced symmetrical visual feedback, irrespective of the symmetry of the body movements that had to be performed (for a critical discussion of the role of vision regarding the emergence of such symmetry effects, see Heed & Röder, 2014).…”

Priming of reach and grasp actions by handled objects.

“…That is, the representation of the grasp posture evoked by the object is based only on the shape and orientation of the handle. We have suggested that this assumption is questionable, however, given convincing evidence that actions are habitually represented in terms of anticipated outcomes, and that such action-outcome associations may have the same influence on performance as elementary stimulus-response mapping rules known to play a fundamental role in mental set (Kühn, Seurinck, Fias, & Waszak, 2010;Massen & Prinz, 2007).…”

“…Massen and Prinz (2007) and Herwig and Massen (2009) provided evidence that tool-use actions are represented not in terms of an abstract internal model of the possible behaviors of a tool (Johnson-Frey, 2003), but in terms of particular target-tomovement mappings that capture the relationship between a targeted physical outcome (e.g. touching a particular object with a lever) and a specific movement of the limb applied to the tool.…”

“…Massen and Prinz (2007) have demonstrated that precuing the target-movement mapping for a tool benefits performance. The target-movement mapping associated with a tool or utensil is the relationship between the hand action applied to the object and the outcome of this action.…”

The effect of continuous, nonlinearly transformed visual feedback on rapid aiming movements

“…Here, an internal model of the transformation allows determining the steering wheel rotation required to attain a goal specified in terms of lane position and heading angle. The ability to develop internal models of transformations implies that people are able to control systems directly in terms of system output, even before they start moving (i.e., in open loop mode, which is fast), rather than that they need to continuously attend to the system output and correct deviations from the intended output (closed loop, which is slow; e.g., Heuer and Hegele 2007;Massen and Prinz 2007). Developing internal models of nonlinear transformations represents an important aspect of perceptual-motor integration, which is one of the key motor control processes (e.g., Willingham 1998).…”