Abstract
Affordances represent features of an object that trigger specific actions. Here we tested whether the presence and orientation of a handle on a cup could bias grasping movements towards it in conditions where subjects were explicitly told to ignore the handle. We quantified the grip aperture profile of twelve healthy participants instructed to grasp a cup from its body while it either had no handle, a handle pointing towards, or away from the grasping hand (3 ‘move’ conditions, with large grip aperture). To ensure the smaller grip aperture afforded by the handle was implicitly processed, we interspersed trials in which participants had to grasp the cup from its handle or a handle not attached to a cup with a small grip aperture. We found that grip aperture was smaller in the presence of a handle in the ‘move’ conditions, independently of its orientation. Our finding, of an effect of the handle during the execution of a grasp action, extends previous evidence of such an influence measured during motor preparation using simple reaction times. It suggests that the specific action elicited by an object’s attribute can affect movement performance in a sustained manner throughout movement execution.
Highlights
Affordances represent features of an object that trigger specific actions
In addition to investigating affordance effects at the time of maximum grip aperture prior to grasping the object, we examined the time course of these effects throughout the movement execution phase by quantifying the grip aperture profile in 10% steps from movement onset until maximum grip aperture[38]
The error rates were analysed using a one-way repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with five conditions entered for each participant to identify whether error rates were different between conditions
Summary
Affordances represent features of an object that trigger specific actions. Here we tested whether the presence and orientation of a handle on a cup could bias grasping movements towards it in conditions where subjects were explicitly told to ignore the handle. Of an effect of the handle during the execution of a grasp action, extends previous evidence of such an influence measured during motor preparation using simple reaction times It suggests that the specific action elicited by an object’s attribute can affect movement performance in a sustained manner throughout movement execution. Further studies have demonstrated that object features may ‘automatically’ trigger components of specific actions, such as reaching and grasping[3,4,5]. The degree of interaction between them depends on task demands, the degree of online control and visual feedback required by an action[25,26] Human homologues of these areas have been demonstrated in functional neuroimaging studies[27,28,29,30]. A study by Buccino et al.[31] demonstrated greater motor excitability in the affording effector when participants were presented with images of www.nature.com/scientificreports/
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