Motor Responses to Objects: Priming and Hand Shaping

摘要

This research deals with motor responses to common objects and with the cognitive representations of such responses. A priming would facilitate judgements about the sensibility of actions performed with objects. Primes pertained to (a) the size of the functional hand shape and/or (b) whether the hand acted as a prehensile or nonprehensile instrument. Priming was found to be effective when both these features were specified and training on the prime signal required that the shape be explicitly enacted. Partial primes and training of verbal responses to the signal were effective. Examination of actual manual responses to objects indicates that interactions involving different hand shapes have a common timecourse during reaching and preshaping until relatively late, when the precision of the ultimate motor act differentiates among large and small, and prehensile versus nonprehensile, shapes. (SDW)