Object affordance influences instruction span

Do graspable objects always leave a motor signature? A study on memory traces

Several studies have reported the existence of reciprocal interactions between the type of motor activity physically performed on objects and the conceptual knowledge that is retained of them. Whether covert motor activity plays a similar effect is less clear. Certainly, objects are strong triggers for actions, and motor components can make the associated concepts more memorable. However, addition of an action-related memory trace may not always be automatic and could rather depend on 'how' objects are encountered. To test this hypothesis, we compared memory for objects that passive observers experienced as verbal labels (the word describing them), visual images (color photographs) and actions (pantomimes of object use). We predicted that the more direct the involvement of action-related representations the more effective would be the addition of a motor code to the experience and the more accurate would be the recall. Results showed that memory for objects presented as words i.e., a format that might only indirectly prime the sensorimotor system, was generally less accurate compared to memory for objects presented as photographs or pantomimes, which are more likely to directly elicit motor simulation processes. In addition, free recall of objects experienced as pantomimes was more accurate when these items afforded actions performed towards one's body than actions directed away from the body. We propose that covert motor activity can contribute to objects' memory, but the beneficial addition of a motor code to the experience is not necessarily automatic. An advantage is more likely to emerge when the observer is induced to take a first-person stance during the encoding phase, as may happen for objects affording actions directed towards the body, which obviously carry more relevance for the actor.

Vocal-motor interference eliminates the memory advantage for vocal melodies

Spontaneous motor cortical activity during passive perception of action has been interpreted as a sensorimotor simulation of the observed action. There is currently interest in how sensorimotor simulation can support higher-up cognitive functions, such as memory, but this is relatively unexplored in the auditory domain. In the present study, we examined whether the established memory advantage for vocal melodies over non-vocal melodies is attributable to stronger sensorimotor simulation during perception of vocal relative to non-vocal action. Participants listened to 24 unfamiliar folk melodies presented in vocal or piano timbres. These were encoded during three interference conditions: whispering (vocal-motor interference), tapping (non-vocal motor interference), and no-interference. Afterwards, participants heard the original 24 melodies presented among 24 foils and judged whether melodies were old or new. A vocal-memory advantage was found in the no-interference and tapping conditions; however, the advantage was eliminated in the whispering condition. This suggests that sensorimotor simulationduring the perception of vocal melodies is responsible for the observed vocal-memory advantage.

Hand-use norms for Dutch and English manual action verbs: Implicit measures from a pantomime task

Many studies use manual action verbs to test whether people use neural systems for controlling manual actions to understand language about those actions. Yet, few of these studies empirically establish how people use their hands to perform the actions described by those verbs, relying instead on explicit self-report measures. Here, participants pantomimed the manual actions described by a large set of Dutch (N = 251) and English (N = 250) verbs, allowing us to approximate the extent to which people use each of their hands to perform these actions. After the pantomime task, participants also provided explicit ratings of each of these actions. The results from the pantomime task showed that most manual actions cannot be described accurately as either "unimanual" or "bimanual." With a few exceptions, unimanual action verbs do not describe actions that are performed with only one hand, and bimanual verbs do not describe actions that are performed by using both hands equally. Instead, individual actions vary continuously in the extent to which people use their non-dominant hand to perform them, and in the extent to which people consistently prefer one hand or the other to perform them. Finally, by comparing participants' implicit behavior to their explicit ratings, we found that participants' self-report showed only limited correspondence with their observed motor behavior. We provide all of our measures in both raw and summary format, offering researchers a precision tool for constructing stimulus sets for experiments on embodied cognition.

Left-handers know what's left is right: Handedness and object affordance

We live in a right-hander’s world. Although left-handers become accustomed to using right-handed devices, an underlying preference for objects that afford the dominant hand could remain. We employed eye tracking while left- and right-handed participants viewed advertisements for everyday products. Participants then rated aesthetic appeal, purchase intention, and perceived value. Left-handed participants found advertisements for products that more easily afforded them action to be more aesthetically appealing. They also indicated greater future purchase intention for products that were oriented towards the left hand, and gave these products a higher perceived value. Eye tracking data showed that object handles attracted attention, and were also able to retain participants’ attention. Further, across multiple eye movement measures, our data show that participant eye movements were altered by the orientation of the handle, such that this side of the image was examined earlier and for longer, regardless of handedness. Left-handers’ preferences might be stronger because they are more aware of object orientation, whereas right-handers do not experience the same difficulties. These findings highlight intrinsic differences in the way in which we perceive objects and our underlying judgments about those products, based on handedness.

Effects of grasp compatibility on long-term memory for objects

Previous studies have shown action potentiation during conceptual processing of manipulable objects. In four experiments, we investigated whether these motor actions also play a role in long-term memory. Participants categorized objects that afforded either a power grasp or a precision grasp as natural or artifact by grasping cylinders with either a power grasp or a precision grasp. In all experiments, responses were faster when the affordance of the object was compatible with the type of grasp response. However, subsequent free recall and recognition memory tasks revealed no better memory for object pictures and object names for which the grasp affordance was compatible with the grasp response. The present results therefore do not support the hypothesis that motor actions play a role in long-term memory.

Motor experience influences object knowledge

An object's perceived readiness-for-action (e.g., its size, the degree of rotation from its canonical position, the user's viewpoint) can influence semantic knowledge retrieval. Yet, the organization of object knowledge may also be affected by body-specific sensorimotor experiences. Here, we investigated whether people's history of performing motor actions with their hands influences the knowledge they store and retrieve about graspable objects. We compared object representations between healthy right- and left-handers (Experiment 1), and between unilateral stroke patients, whose motor experience was changed by impairment of either their right or left hand (Experiment 2). Participants saw pictures of graspable everyday items with the handles oriented toward either the left or right hand, and they generated the type of grasp they would employ (i.e., clench or pinch) when using each object, responding orally. In both experiments, hand dominance and object orientation interacted to predict response times. In Experiment 1, judgments were fastest when objects were oriented toward the right hand in right-handers, but not in left-handers. In Experiment 2, judgments were fastest when objects were oriented toward the left hand in patients who had lost the use of their right hand, even though these patients were right-handed prior to brain injury. Results suggest that at least some aspects of object knowledge are determined by motor experience, and can be changed by new patterns of motor experience. People with different bodily characteristics, who interact with objects in systematically different ways, form correspondingly different neurocognitive representations of the same common objects. (PsycINFO Database Record

Learning Is Better with the Hands Free: The Role of Posture in the Memory of Manipulable Objects

Grounded cognition proposes that memory shares processing resources with sensorimotor systems. The aim of the present study was to show that motor simulation participates in the conceptual representation of manipulable objects in long-term memory. In two experiments, lists of manipulable and nonmanipulable objects were presented. Participants were instructed to memorize the items while adopting different postures. In the control condition, they had to keep their hands at rest in front of them. In the interference condition, participants had to keep their hands crossed behind their back to make their hands less free for action. After each list, participants had to perform first a distractive task, and then an oral free recall. The results showed that the interfering posture produced a specific decrease in the recall of manipulable objects, but not of nonmanipulable ones. This decrease was similar when the items were presented as pictures (Experiment 1) or as words (Experiment 2), thus excluding a purely visual effect. These results provide strong evidence that the motor simulation plays a role in the memory trace of the object.

Haptic, Virtual Interaction and Motor Imagery: Entertainment Tools and Psychophysiological Testing

In this work, the perception of affordances was analysed in terms of cognitive neuroscience during an interactive experience in a virtual reality environment. In particular, we chose a virtual reality scenario based on the Leap Motion controller: this sensor device captures the movements of the user’s hand and fingers, which are reproduced on a computer screen by the proper software applications. For our experiment, we employed a sample of 10 subjects matched by age and sex and chosen among university students. The subjects took part in motor imagery training and immersive affordance condition (a virtual training with Leap Motion and a haptic training with real objects). After each training sessions the subject performed a recognition task, in order to investigate event-related potential (ERP) components. The results revealed significant differences in the attentional components during the Leap Motion training. During Leap Motion session, latencies increased in the occipital lobes, which are entrusted to visual sensory; in contrast, latencies decreased in the frontal lobe, where the brain is mainly activated for attention and action planning.

Effects of motor congruence on visual working memory

Grounded-cognition theories suggest that memory shares processing resources with perception and action. The motor system could be used to help memorize visual objects. In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that people use motor affordances to maintain object representations in working memory. Participants performed a working memory task on photographs of manipulable and nonmanipulable objects. The manipulable objects were objects that required either a precision grip (i.e., small items) or a power grip (i.e., large items) to use. A concurrent motor task that could be congruent or incongruent with the manipulable objects caused no difference in working memory performance relative to nonmanipulable objects. Moreover, the precision- or power-grip motor task did not affect memory performance on small and large items differently. These findings suggest that the motor system plays no part in visual working memory.

Visual context modulates potentiation of grasp types during semantic object categorization

Substantial evidence suggests that conceptual processing of manipulable objects is associated with potentiation of action. Such data have been viewed as evidence that objects are recognized via access to action features. Many objects, however, are associated with multiple actions. For example, a kitchen timer may be clenched with a power grip to move it but pinched with a precision grip to use it. The present study tested the hypothesis that action evocation during conceptual object processing is responsive to the visual scene in which objects are presented. Twenty-five healthy adults were asked to categorize object pictures presented in different naturalistic visual contexts that evoke either move- or use-related actions. Categorization judgments (natural vs. artifact) were performed by executing a move- or use-related action (clench vs. pinch) on a response device, and response times were assessed as a function of contextual congruence. Although the actions performed were irrelevant to the categorization judgment, responses were significantly faster when actions were compatible with the visual context. This compatibility effect was largely driven by faster pinch responses when objects were presented in use-compatible, as compared with move-compatible, contexts. The present study is the first to highlight the influence of visual scene on stimulus-response compatibility effects during semantic object processing. These data support the hypothesis that action evocation during conceptual object processing is biased toward context-relevant actions.

The influence of handedness on hemispheric representation of tools: a survey

An important debate exists in contemporary cognitive neuroscience about the innate or experience-dependent origin of the brain representation of conceptual categories. The 'domains of knowledge' hypothesis maintains that innate factors subsume the categorical organization at the brain level of animals, plant life and artefacts. On the other hand, the 'sensory-motor model of conceptual knowledge' and the embodied cognition theory attribute this categorical organization to experience-dependent factors. I tried to clarify this issue by surveying the influence that handedness could have on the lateralization of tools representation in the inferior fronto-parietal and posterior middle temporal cortices of the left hemisphere. The underlying assumption was that, if this lateralization results from innate mechanisms, then handedness should not influence this hemispheric asymmetry. If, on the other hand, this lateralization is due to the motor and somatosensory experiences made with the right dominant hand during the manipulation of tools and other artefacts, then this asymmetry should be inverted or strongly attenuated in left-handers. Results of the review strongly suggest that manual experience acquired during tool manipulation can influence the hemispheric representation of tools and other artefacts. They also suggest, however, that handedness-related embodiment is not fixed, but influenced by personal motor experiences (such as those made by left-handers who have been forced to use their right hand) and by social visual experiences (such as the fact that, living in a right-handed world, left-handers see more people in their environment who use the right rather than the left hand) during tool manipulation.

Real-world objects are more memorable than photographs of objects

Research studies in psychology typically use two-dimensional (2D) images of objects as proxies for real-world three-dimensional (3D) stimuli. There are, however, a number of important differences between real objects and images that could influence cognition and behavior. Although human memory has been studied extensively, only a handful of studies have used real objects in the context of memory and virtually none have directly compared memory for real objects vs. their 2D counterparts. Here we examined whether or not episodic memory is influenced by the format in which objects are displayed. We conducted two experiments asking participants to freely recall, and to recognize, a set of 44 common household objects. Critically, the exemplars were displayed to observers in one of three viewing conditions: real-world objects, colored photographs, or black and white line drawings. Stimuli were closely matched across conditions for size, orientation, and illumination. Surprisingly, recall and recognition performance was significantly better for real objects compared to colored photographs or line drawings (for which memory performance was equivalent). We replicated this pattern in a second experiment comparing memory for real objects vs. color photos, when the stimuli were matched for viewing angle across conditions. Again, recall and recognition performance was significantly better for the real objects than matched color photos of the same items. Taken together, our data suggest that real objects are more memorable than pictorial stimuli. Our results highlight the importance of studying real-world object cognition and raise the potential for applied use in developing effective strategies for education, marketing, and further research on object-related cognition.

When Left Is Not Right

According to the body-specificity hypothesis, hearing action words creates body-specific mental simulations of the actions. Handedness should, therefore, affect mental simulations. Given that pictures of actions also evoke mental simulations and often accompany words to be learned, would pictures that mismatch the mental simulation of words negatively affect learning? We investigated effects of pictures with a left-handed, right-handed, or bimanual perspective on left- and right-handers’ learning of object-manipulation words in an artificial language. Right-handers recalled fewer definitions of words learned with a corresponding left-handed-perspective picture than with a right-handed-perspective picture. For left-handers, there was no effect of perspective. These findings suggest that mismatches between pictures and mental simulations evoked by hearing action words can negatively affect right-handers’ learning. Left-handers, who encounter the right-handed perspective frequently, could presumably overcome the lack of motor experience with visual experience and, therefore, not be influenced by picture perspective.