Representational Processes of Actions Toward and Away from the Body

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of mental representation processes during the planning, reaching, and use phases of actions with tools commonly used toward the body (TB, e.g., toothbrush) or away from the body (AB, e.g., pencil). In the first session, healthy participants were asked to perform TB (i.e., making circular movements with the toothbrush near the mouth) and AB (i.e., making circular movements with the pencil near the desk) actions both with (i.e., actual use) and without the tool in hand (i.e., the pantomime of tool use). In the second session, the same participants performed a series of mental rotation tasks involving body‐ (i.e., face and hands) and object‐related (i.e., abstract lines) stimuli. The temporal and kinematic analysis of the motor actions showed that the time required to start the pantomimes (i.e., the planning phase) was shorter for the AB action than for the TB action. In contrast, the reaching phase lasted longer for the AB action than for the TB action. Furthermore, the TB pantomime was associated with the performance in the mental rotation of body‐related stimuli, especially during the planning and reaching phases, whereas the AB pantomime was more related to the performance in the mental rotation of object‐related stimuli, especially during the tool use phase. Thus, the results revealed that the direction of a goal‐directed motor action influences the dynamics of the different phases of the motor action and can determine the type of mental images involved in the planning and execution of the action.

Spatial representations of objects used away and towards the body: The effect of near and far space

“…To explore this link, in the current study we asked participants to memorize pairs of AB or TB objects which were shown within or outside arm reach and to remember their positions. Once the objects had disappeared, participants had to judge whether a target object was closest to them (egocentric judgement) or closest to a wooden bar (allocentric judgement) (Ruotolo et al, 2022). We expect egocentric judgments to be more accurate and faster when TB objects are presented within arm reaching space (i.e.…”

Gender differences in the observation of gesture distance: a physiological study

“…This suggests the involvement of various socio-cognitive mechanisms in the processing of pantomimes, including technical reasoning, motor control, body knowledge, semantic knowledge, and theory of mind [14] .Recent studies distinguish gestures according to where the action is directed, i.e. toward the body (TB) or away from the body (AB) [15][16][17][18] . This distinction is based on previous studies conducted with…”

“…Recent studies distinguish gestures according to where the action is directed, i.e. toward the body (TB) or away from the body (AB) [15][16][17][18] . This distinction is based on previous studies conducted with…”