Hand-Object Interaction: From Grasping to Using

Evidence from psychology has shown that visual man-made manipulable objects can afford grasping actions even without the observers’ intention to grasp them, and humans are able to use grasping information to recognize objects. But little is known if visual man-made objects, especially tools, can potentiate much more complex actions associated with using an object. In the present study, a priming paradigm was used to explore if passively viewing manipulable objects could be enough to activate specific action information about how to use them. The results showed that target objects with similar functional manipulation information to the prime objects were identified significantly faster than that with dissimilar manipulation knowledge to the prime objects. This is the first evidence by using behavioral study to indicate that just passively viewing a manipulable object is sufficient to activate its specific manipulation information that could facilitate object identification even without participants’ intention to use them. The implications of manipulation knowledge in object affordances and object representation are discussed.

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