Cognition, action, and object manipulation.

Abstract

Although psychology is the science of mental life and behavior, it has paid little attention to the means by which mental life is translated into behavior. One domain where links between cognition and action have been explored is the manipulation of objects. This article reviews psychological research on this topic, with special emphasis on the tendency to grasp objects differently depending on what one plans to do with the objects. Such differential grasping has been demonstrated in a wide range of object manipulation tasks, including grasping an object in a way that reveals anticipation of the object's future orientation, height, and required placement precision. Differential grasping has also been demonstrated in a wide range of behaviors, including one-hand grasps, two-hand grasps, walking, and transferring objects from place to place as well as from person to person. The populations in whom the tendency has been shown are also diverse, including nonhuman primates as well as human adults, children, and babies. Meanwhile, the tendency is compromised in a variety of clinical populations and in children of a surprisingly advanced age. Verbal working memory is compromised as well if words are memorized while object manipulation tasks are performed; the recency portion of the serial position curve is reduced in this circumstance. In general, the research reviewed here points to rich connections between cognition and action as revealed through the study of object manipulation. Other implications concern affordances, Donders' Law, and naturalistic observation and the teaching of psychology.

Sensitivity to hierarchical relations among affordances in the assembly of asymmetric tools

“…That is, in everyday life and in laboratory settings, affordances exist in the context of other affordances. The choice among affordances is powerfully influenced by behavioral goals-among myriad available actions, only a limited set will be relevant to any particular goal (see Bingham and Muchisky 1995;Rosenbaum et al 2012). Yet even this limited subset may be numerous, because there often are many different means to achieve a given goal (Bernstein 1967;Turvey 2007); to use a colloquial expression, there are many ways to skin a cat.…”

The processing of speech, gesture, and action during language comprehension

“…In the present study, we extended this research by focusing on a more pervasive and visually rich and dynamic type of cospeech information: manual actions on objects. Manual actions, especially when they are used communicatively, are one of the most ubiquitous and commonly occurring forms of visual input during social interactions (for more on actions on objects, see Rosenbaum et al 2012). But it is not well understood how comprehension of actions relates to the comprehension of hand gestures, which are equally pervasive and natural.…”

Which way to take? Infants select an efficient path to their goal

“…A fundamental principle of human action control concerns the tendency to select actions depending on their relative efficiency to reach a goal (e.g., Bernstein, 1967;Rosenbaum, Chapman, Weigelt, Weiss, & van der Wel, 2012). It has been shown, for example, that when rotating an upside-down placed cup, adults start the movement with an uncomfortable thumb-down grip in order to end the movement in a comfortable thumb-up grip (end-state comfort effect; e.g., Short & Cauraugh, 1997;Weigelt, Kunde, & Prinz, 2006).…”