Felt heaviness is used to perceive the affordance for throwing but rotational inertia does not affect either

Bingham et al. discovered a perceptible affordance property, composed of a relation between object weight and size, used to select optimal objects for long-distance throwing. Subsequent research confirmed this finding, but disconfirmed a hypothesis formulated by Bingham et al. about the information used to perceive the affordance. Following this, Zhu and Bingham investigated the possibility that optimal objects for throwing are selected as having a particular felt heaviness. The results supported this hypothesis. Perceived heaviness exhibits the size–weight illusion: to be perceived as equally heavy, larger objects must weigh more than smaller ones. Amazeen and Turvey showed that heaviness perception is determined by rotational inertia. We investigated whether rotational inertia would determine both perceived heaviness and throw-ability when spherical objects were held in the hand and wielded about the wrist. We found again that a particular judged heaviness corresponded to judged throw-ability. However, rotational inertia was found to have no effect on either judgment, suggesting that rotational inertia does not determine perceived heaviness of spherical objects held in the hand, as it did for the weighted-rod-type objects used by Amazeen and Turvey.

[1]  Steven J. Harrison,et al.  Using Vision and Dynamic Touch to Perceive the Affordances of Tools , 2007, Perception.

[2]  Qin Zhu,et al.  Learning to perceive the affordance for long-distance throwing: smart mechanism or function learning? , 2010, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[3]  Peter J Beek,et al.  Mechanical invariants are implicated in dynamic touch as a function of their salience in the stimulus flow. , 2006, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[4]  Peter J Beek,et al.  Which mechanical invariants are associated with the perception of length and heaviness of a nonvisible handheld rod? Testing the inertia tensor hypothesis. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[5]  G. Bingham,et al.  Hefting for a maximum distance throw: a smart perceptual mechanism. , 1989, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[6]  Jeffrey B. Wagman,et al.  Affordances and Inertial Constraints on Tool Use , 2001 .

[7]  M. Turvey,et al.  Weight perception and the haptic size-weight illusion are functions of the inertia tensor. , 1996, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[8]  M. Turvey,et al.  Somatosensory attunement to the rigid body laws , 2000, Experimental Brain Research.

[9]  C. M. Davis,et al.  Lifting movements in the size-weight illusion , 1976 .

[10]  Geoffrey P Bingham,et al.  Is hefting to perceive the affordance for throwing a smart perceptual mechanism? , 2008, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[11]  K. Shockley,et al.  Metamers for Hammer-With-Ability Are Not Metamers for Poke-With-Ability , 2011 .

[12]  Kevin Shockley,et al.  Perceiving Affordances of Hockey Sticks by Dynamic Touch , 2006 .

[13]  I. Kingma,et al.  The Inertia Tensor Versus Static Moment and Mass in Perceiving Length and Heaviness of Hand-Wielded Rods , 2002 .

[14]  Paul Brickett,et al.  The role of preparatory muscular tension in the size-weight illusion , 1977 .

[15]  Eric L. Amazeen,et al.  The Effects of volume on Perceived Heaviness by Dynamic Touch: With and Without Vision , 1997 .

[16]  J. Flanagan,et al.  Independence of perceptual and sensorimotor predictions in the size–weight illusion , 2000, Nature Neuroscience.

[17]  HELEN E. ROSS.  Sensory Information necessary for the Size–Weight Illusion , 1966, Nature.

[18]  M T Turvey,et al.  Perceiving the Sweet Spot , 1999, Perception.

[19]  Geoffrey P. Bingham,et al.  Human readiness to throw: the size–weight illusion is not an illusion when picking the best objects to throw ☆ , 2011 .

[20]  M. Turvey,et al.  Affordance, proper function, and the physical basis of perceived heaviness , 1999, Cognition.

[21]  Kevin Shockley,et al.  Metamers in the haptic perception of heaviness and moveableness , 2004, Perception & psychophysics.

[22]  Qin Zhu,et al.  Learning to throw to maximum distances: do changes in release angle and speed reflect affordances for throwing? , 2009, Human movement science.