Authors: Scott D Squires Scott N Macdonald Jody C Culham Jacqueline C Snow
Publish Date: 2015/12/21
Volume: 234, Issue: 4, Pages: 963-976
Abstract
Humans are faster to grasp an object such as a tool if they have previewed the same object beforehand This priming effect is strongest when actors gesture the use of the tool rather than simply move it possibly because the previewed tool activates actionspecific routines in dorsalstream motor networks Here we examined whether real tools which observers could physically act upon serve as more potent primes than twodimensional images of tools which do not afford physical action Participants were presented with a prime stimulus that could be either a real tool or a visually matched photograph of a tool After a brief delay participants interacted with a real tool target either by ‘grasping to move’ or ‘grasping to use’ it The identities of the prime and target tools were either the same congruent trials eg spatula–spatula or different incongruent trials eg whisk–spatula As expected participants were faster to initiate grasps during trials when they had to move the tool rather than gesture its use Priming effects were observed for grasptouse but not grasptomove responses Surprisingly however both pictures of tools and real tools primed action responses equally Our results indicate that tool priming effects are driven by pictorial cues and their implied actions even in the absence of volumetric cues that reflect the tangibility and affordances of the primeThis work was funded by a Discovery Grant and Discovery Accelerator Supplement from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council NSERC of Canada 2498772006RGPIN to JCC an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to SM and an Undergraduate Student Research Award from NSERC to SS We thank Kevin Stubbs Derek Quinlan and Joey Paciocco for technical assistance
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