The bottle and the glass say to me: “Pour!”

Abstract

The present study aimed at determining whether the observation of two functionally compatible artefacts, that is which potentially concur in achieving a specific function, automatically activates a motor programme of interaction between the two objects. To this purpose, an interference paradigm was used during which an artefact (a bottle filled with orange juice), target of a reaching-grasping and lifting sequence, was presented alone or with a non-target object (distractor) of the same or different semantic category and functionally compatible or not. In experiment 1, the bottle was presented alone or with an artefact (a sphere), or a natural (an apple) distractor. In experiment 2, the bottle was presented with either the apple or a glass (an artefact) filled with orange juice, whereas in experiment 3, either an empty or a filled glass was presented. In the control experiment 4, we compared the kinematics of reaching-grasping and pouring with those of reaching-grasping and lifting. The kinematics of reach, grasp and lift was affected by distractor presentation. However, no difference was observed between two distractors that belonged to different semantic categories. In contrast, the presence of the empty rather filled glass affected the kinematics of the actual grasp. This suggests that an actually functional compatibility between target (the bottle) and distractor (the empty glass) was necessary to activate automatically a programme of interaction (i.e. pouring) between the two artefacts. This programme affected the programme actually executed (i.e. lifting). The results of the present study indicate that, in addition to affordances related to intrinsic object properties, "working affordances" related to a specific use of an artefact with another object can be activated on the basis of functional compatibility.

Type of gesture, valence, and gaze modulate the influence of gestures on observer's behaviors

“…Note that lower trajectories indicate veering away from the conspecific's gesturing hand. This result is in accordance with results of studies in which visual distractors were presented together with a target (Tipper et al, 1991, 1997; De Stefani et al, 2012) or a gesture of pouring request was presented to an observer (Innocenti et al, 2012). In both conditions, the hand veered away from the distractor object or the gesturing hand.…”

“…Thus, we expected interference of the type of gesture with the actual action, which, however, could be stronger for request than symbolic gestures. The interference could induce movement slowing down or veering away from the gesturing conspecific (Tipper et al, 1991, 1997; De Stefani et al, 2012; Innocenti et al, 2012). …”

Tracking the Time Course of Top-Down Contextual Effects on Motor Responses during Action Comprehension

“…The actions involved the reach-to-grasp movement of seven different objects (a bottle, a cup, a spoon, a glass, a spray cleaner, a hammer, and a screw) that could be manipulated to perform either one of two possible actions. For example, in the case of the object "bottle," the two potential actions were (1) to pour and (2) to place, and each action could be performed with their correspondent kinematics: reaching to grasp and pour using a whole-hand prehension grip, and reaching to grasp and lift using a precision grip, respectively (De Stefani et al, 2012).…”

Eat Me If You Can: Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying the Distance Effect

“…If objects are presented in such way that prevents their usage, no motor information is activated. Perceiving a bottle of water and a full glass has shown not to activate the affordance to pour as the glass is already full and therefore not functional [4]. Both of these requirements appear to be at odds with the idea of affordances posed by images of objects as those are neither reachable nor functional: They are, as a matter of fact, not actionable [18].…”