title: Handing a tool to someone can take more time than using it.
abstract: Jax and Buxbaum [Jax and Buxbaum (2010). Response interference between functional and structural actions linked to the same familiar object. Cognition, 115, 350-355] demonstrated that grasp-to-transport actions (handing an object to someone, i.e., a receiver) are initiated more quickly than grasp-to-use actions. A possible interpretation of these findings is that grasp-to-transport actions do not require activation of long-term representations. In Jax and Buxbaum's study, participants positioned their hand on the object as they would to transport/use it in a conventional way. So, movement planning was based only on egocentric relationships (individual-object) and not on allocentric relationships (object-object or object-"receiver"). It is likely that participants may not have activated long-term social representations about how to hand an object to someone in the transport task. In Experiment 1, we replicated J&B's results by asking participants to position their hand on familiar tools as they would to hand them to someone (grasp-to-transport)/use them in a non-conventional way (i.e., to hit a ball, grasp-to-use). In Experiment 2, participants had to actually perform the actions. We found the opposite pattern in that grasp-to-use actions were initiated more quickly than grasp-to-transport actions. These findings indicate that the modulation of allocentric constraints might induce activation of long-term representations in transport actions. This suggests that, under certain circumstances, long-term representations might be necessary not only for use actions but also for transport actions.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Etude des Mécanismes Cognitifs (EA 3082), Université Lyon 2, France. Francois.Osiurak@univ-lyon2.fr
authors.forename: François
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Osiurak
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Roche
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ramone
authors.forename: Hanna
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chainay
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D053001:Tool Use Behavior; D055815:Young Adult