Use Of Familiar Tools Research Articles

Edukasi Hidroponik Berdaya Berbasis Webinar pada Kondisi Pandemi Covid-19

The increasingly widespread spread of Covid-19 and the increasing number of victims who have died from the virus have caused more activities to be carried out at home. Therefore, the government made a policy by implementing Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB), Lockdown as an effort to prevent the spread of the virus. However, the government has also made an offer to do Work from Home (WFH) so that productive activities can continue amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the positive and useful activities, such as holding virtual-based hydroponic training for the community. The hydroponic training method is carried out boldly through zoom webinars, the activities are conceptualized and arranged systematically, it is hoped that the participants can master the basic and simple techniques to start hydroponics at home and can take advantage of limited land. Based on the results of this virtual-based hydroponic training it was found that the participants seemed enthusiastic and responded very well to the training material, indicated by the number of questions and the number of participants who attended, some of whom even planned to directly hold hydroponic training. Because the training material presented is quite light and easily understood by the participants. In addition, this training is in accordance with the principles of hydroponic beginners, simple, and the use of familiar tools around us.

Physical understanding in neurodegenerative diseases

ABSTRACT This quantitative review gives an overview of physical understanding (i.e., the ability to represent and use the laws of physics to interact with the physical world) impairments in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), semantic dementia (SD), and corticobasal syndrome (CBS), as assessed mainly with mechanical problem-solving and tool use tests. This review shows that: (1) SD patients have apraxia of tool use because of semantic tool knowledge deficits, but normal performance in tests of physical understanding; (2) AD and CBS patients show impaired performance in mechanical problem-solving tests, probably not because of intrinsic deficits of physical understanding, but rather because of additional cognitive (AD) or motor impairments (CBS); (3) As a result, the performance in mechanical problem-solving tests is not a good predictor of familiar tool use in dementia; (4) Actual deficits of physical understanding are probably observed only in late stages of neurodegenerative diseases, and associated with functional loss.

Tool use in left-brain-damaged patients: Difficulties in reasoning but not in estimating the physical properties of objects.

The purpose of this study was to deepen our understanding of the cognitive bases of human tool use based on the technical reasoning hypothesis (i.e., the reasoning-based approach). This approach assumes that tool use is supported by the ability to reason about an object's physical properties (e.g., length, weight, strength, etc.) to perform mechanical actions (e.g., lever). In this framework, an important issue is to understand whether left-brain-damaged (LBD) individuals with tool-use deficits are still able to estimate the physical object's properties necessary to use the tool. Eleven LBD patients and 12 control participants performed 3 original experimental tasks: Use-Length (visual evaluation of the length of a stick to bring down a target), Visual-Length (to visually compare objects of different lengths) and Addition-Length (to visually compare added lengths). Participants were also tested on conventional tasks: Familiar Tool Use and Mechanical Problem-Solving (novel tools). LBD patients had more difficulties than controls on both conventional tasks. No significant differences were observed for the 3 experimental tasks. These results extend the reasoning-based approach, stressing that it might not be the representation of length that is impaired in LBD patients, but rather the ability to generate mechanical actions based on physical object properties. (PsycINFO Database Record

Mechanical knowledge does matter to tool use even when assessed with a non-production task: Evidence from left brain-damaged patients.

In the literature on apraxia of tool use, it is now accepted that using familiar tools requires semantic and mechanical knowledge. However, mechanical knowledge is nearly always assessed with production tasks, so one may assume that mechanical knowledge and familiar tool use are associated only because of their common motor mechanisms. This notion may be challenged by demonstrating that familiar tool use depends on an alternative tool selection task assessing mechanical knowledge, where alternative uses of tools are assumed according to their physical properties but where actual use of tools is not needed. We tested 21 left brain-damaged patients and 21 matched controls with familiar tool use tasks (pantomime and single tool use), semantic tasks and an alternative tool selection task. The alternative tool selection task accounted for a large amount of variance in the single tool use task and was the best predictor among all the semantic tasks. Concerning the pantomime of tool use task, group and individual results suggested that the integrity of the semantic system and preserved mechanical knowledge are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce pantomimes. These results corroborate the idea that mechanical knowledge is essential when we use tools, even when tasks assessing mechanical knowledge do not require the production of any motor action. Our results also confirm the value of pantomime of tool use, which can be considered as a complex activity involving several cognitive abilities (e.g., communicative skills) rather than the activation of gesture engrams.

Les multiples facettes des pantomimes d’utilisation d’outils

Pantomiming the use of familiar tools is a central test in the assessment of apraxia. Indeed, this task is quite sensitive to detect apraxia in patients with left brain damage, particularly when the lesions fall into the parietal lobe. However, surprisingly, the nature of the underlying cognitive mechanisms remains a matter of debate. It has been proposed that activation of manipulation knowledge was a prerequisite to perform pantomime actions. This type of knowledge informs individuals about how to manipulate tools (e.g., knowing that the use of a hammer is associated with oscillations of the elbow). In recent years, for the technical reasoning hypothesis, it has been argued that the ability to pantomime the use of a tool can be explained without invoking activation of manipulation knowledge. The demonstration by pantomime, like any other situation involving tool use, requires mechanical knowledge to create a representation of the action. Thus, pantomimes are not available in long-term memory and they have to be reconstructed de novo. In this review, we attempt to redefine pantomime of tool use activity according to recent results reported in the literature ; and to question the real function of pantomimes. To anticipate our conclusions, pantomime of tool use is a multi-determined task, which requires communication skills. Pantomime of tool use is also a powerful screening task, but its interest might be relatively limited when times come to infer impaired cognitive mechanisms.

Rethinking the Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Pantomime of Tool Use: Evidence from Alzheimer's Disease and Semantic Dementia.

Pantomiming the use of familiar tools is a central test in the assessment of apraxia. However, surprisingly, the nature of the underlying cognitive mechanisms remains an unresolved issue. The aim of this study is to shed a new light on this issue by exploring the role of functional, mechanical, and manipulation knowledge in patients with Alzheimer's disease and semantic dementia and apraxia of tool use. We performed multiple regression analyses with the global performance and the nature of errors (i.e., production and conception) made during a pantomime of tool use task in patients and control participants as dependent variables and tasks investigating functional, mechanical, and manipulation knowledge as predictors. We found that mechanical problem solving, assessing mechanical knowledge, was a good predictor of the global performance of pantomime of tool use. We also found that occurrence of conception errors was robustly predicted by the task assessing functional knowledge whereas that of production errors was not explained by only one predictor. Our results suggest that both functional and mechanical knowledge are important to pantomime the use of tools. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that mechanical knowledge plays a role in pantomime of tool use. Although impairment in pantomime of tool use tasks (i.e., apraxia) is widely explained by the disruption of manipulation knowledge, we propose that pantomime of tool use is a complex problem-solving task. (JINS, 2017, 23, 128-138).

A cognitive-based model of tool use in normal aging

ABSTRACTWhile several cognitive domains have been widely investigated in the field of aging, the age-related effects on tool use are still an open issue and hardly any studies on tool use and aging is available. A significant body of literature has indicated that tool use skills might be supported by at least two different types of knowledge, namely, mechanical knowledge and semantic knowledge. However, neither the contribution of these kinds of knowledge to familiar tool use, nor the effects of aging on mechanical and semantic knowledge have been explored in normal aging. The aim of the present study was to fill this gap. To do so, 98 healthy elderly adults were presented with three tasks: a classical, familiar tool use task, a novel tool use task assessing mechanical knowledge, and a picture matching task assessing semantic knowledge. The results showed that aging has a negative impact on tool use tasks and on knowledge supporting tool use skills. We also found that aging did not impact mechanical and semantic knowledge in the same way, confirming the distinct nature of those forms of knowledge. Finally, our results stressed that mechanical and semantic knowledge are both involved in the ability to use familiar tools.

Tool use disorders in neurodegenerative diseases: Roles of semantic memory and technical reasoning

In the field of apraxia, it has been suggested that the ability to use tools and objects in daily life depends not only on semantic knowledge about tool function and context of use but also on technical reasoning about mechanical properties of tools and objects. The aim of the present work was to assess tool use abilities regarding these hypotheses in patients with neurodegenerative diseases and reduced autonomy. Performance of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) (n = 31), semantic dementia (SD) (n = 16) and corticobasal syndrome (CBS) (n = 7) was compared to that of healthy control participants (n = 31) in familiar tool use tasks, functional/contextual associations and mechanical problem solving (MPS). A conversion method was applied to data in order to avoid ceiling effects. Tool use disorders were found in all patient groups but the underlying reasons were different. Patients with SD had difficulties in imagining and selecting familiar tools due to the semantic loss but they performed in normal range in MPS tasks. Interestingly, they performed better with only one tool and its corresponding object, which is interpreted as a partial compensation of semantic loss by spared technical reasoning. Patients with CBS exhibited the reverse pattern, that is, MPS deficits without semantic loss. However, additional qualitative research is needed to disentangle the relative contributions of motor and technical reasoning deficits to this pattern. Both of these profiles were found in patients with AD. For all that, these patients did not commit the same errors as stroke patients with left brain-damage documented in previous works. Several hypotheses are proposed to account for the specificity of tool use disorders in neurodegenerative diseases, and recommendations are provided to caregivers.

Observing Learned Object-specific Functional Grasps Preferentially Activates the Ventral Stream

In one popular account of the human visual system, two streams are distinguished, a ventral stream specialized for perception and a dorsal stream specialized for action. The skillful use of familiar tools, however, is likely to involve the cooperation of both streams. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we scanned individuals while they viewed short movies of familiar tools being grasped in ways that were either consistent or inconsistent with how tools are typically grasped during use. Typical-for-use actions were predicted to preferentially activate parietal areas important for tool use. Instead, our results revealed several areas within the ventral stream, as well as the left posterior middle temporal gyrus, as preferentially active for our typical-for-use actions. We believe these findings reflect sensitivity to learned semantic associations and suggest a special role for these areas in representing object-specific actions. We hypothesize that during actual tool use a complex interplay between the two streams must take place, with ventral stream areas providing critical input as to how an object should be engaged in accordance with stored semantic knowledge.

The use of a tool requires its incorporation into the movement: Evidence from stick-pointing in apraxia

When using a tool, the agent has to control the movement of this implement to perform an efficient action. While perceptual assimilation of a tool has been shown to occur during its use, the incorporation of an implement into the control of movements has received little attention. Here, we investigated the relation between the ability to integrate an object into motor coordination, and tool use. Apraxic patients impaired for familiar tool use were asked to point at targets located at various distances using either their finger, or two sticks of different lengths (23 and 53 cm). Left-brain damaged patients without apraxia participated as controls. Movement kinematics were analysed, with a particular focus on the working point (WP) of the action, defined as the tip of the finger or stick. Control patients produced movements with similar kinematic characteristics in all conditions, and were slightly less accurate with the sticks than with their finger. In contrast, more than half of the apraxics (6/10) showed various degrees of impairment when pointing with the sticks, manifested by deviant and inefficient motor strategies and abnormally large errors. In light of previous work in motor control and kinematics, it is argued that this reflects a deficit in anticipatively controlling a WP located in the stick, that is, in integrating the stick into the movement. We propose that this impairment might be related to dysfunction of the processes involved in dynamic body representation, which needs to be extended to include the tool to be used. Future directions are discussed to further characterize the relation between object incorporation and tool use, and its relevance for understanding apraxia and the neural bases of tool use.

Does tool-related fMRI activity within the intraparietal sulcus reflect the plan to grasp?

Neuroimaging investigations reliably describe a left-lateralized network of areas as underlying the representations of knowledge about familiar tools. Among the critical ‘nodes’ of the network, an area centered within the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is thought to be related to the motoric representations associated with familiar tools and their usage. This area is in the vicinity of an area implicated in the control of object-directed grasping actions: the anterior intraparietal area, AIP. The current study aimed to evaluate whether this tool-related intraparietal activity could be accounted for by the graspable nature of tools or whether it was due to additional factors such as the functionality of tools. First, we found that during a naming task activation within a discrete region of the left anterior intraparietal cortex was higher for tools than for graspable objects, but did not differ between graspable and non-graspable objects. In addition, the peak activity associated with tool naming was found to be largely distinct and consistently posterior to that associated with real object grasping. A separate region, anterior to the tool-selective focus and possibly overlapping with AIP, demonstrated weak selectivity for both tools and graspable objects relative to non-graspable objects.These findings indicate that this tool-selective area at the anterior end of the left IPS is both separable from the grasp-related intraparietal activity and, consistently, it does not simply reflect the processing of grasping affordances. Taken together, these results suggest that object graspability alone cannot account for the left intraparietal activity driven by the naming of tools. Instead, this activity may relate to learned motor representations associated with the skillful use of familiar tools.

The consolidation of democracy in Mauritius

The dangers posed by ethnic conflict and unrealized popular hopes for economic progress are two major stumbling blocks to democratic consolidation. When Mauritius became independent in 1968 the many serious difficulties it faced included ethnic conflicts, economic stagnation, rapid population growth and high unemployment. Yet, three decades on Mauritius is a flourishing democracy and an economic success. The explanation seems to be good luck, a favourable colonial inheritance, good leadership and five consequences of that leadership: the development of competent and representative state bureaucracy; restraint of population growth; economic diversification; the integration of minority communities in the policy process through a civic network; and the accomodation of diverse ethnic communities. Democracy in Mauritius has been consolidated but not perfected. But the dangers of corruption, personalization of political parties and the exclusion of the ti‐kreol from power, while real, have a greater potential for undermining the functioning of democratic institutions than for causing their collapse. The government may need only to continue to apply and expand the use of familiar tools of broad consultation on policy and ameliorative measures for the least well off citizens for democracy to continue to flourish.

Tool use and mechanical problem solving in apraxia

Moorlaas (1928) proposed that apraxic patients can identify objects and can remember the purpose they have been made for but do not know the way in which they must be used to achieve that purpose. Knowledge about the use of objects and tools can have two sources: It can be based on retrieval of instructions of use from semantic memory or on a direct inference of function from structure. The ability to infer function from structure enables subjects to use unfamiliar tools and to detect alternative uses of familiar tools. It is the basis of mechanical problem solving. The purpose of the present study was to analyze retrieval of instruction of use, mechanical problem solving, and actual tool use in patients with apraxia due to circumscribed lesions of the left hemisphere. For assessing mechanical problem solving we developed a test of selection and application of novel tools. Access to instruction of use was tested by pantomime of tool use. Actual tool use was examined for the same familiar tools. Forty two patients with left brain damage (LBD) and aphasia, 22 patients with right brain damage (RBD) and 22 controls were examined. Only LBD patients differed from controls on all tests. RBD patients had difficulties with the use but not with the selection of novel tools. In LBD patients there was a significant correlation between pantomime of tool use and novel tool selection but there were single cases who scored in the defective range on one of these tests and normally on the other. Analysis of LBD patients’ lesions suggested that frontal lobe damage does not disturb novel tool selection. Only LBD patients who failed on pantomime of object use and on novel tool selection committed errors in actual use of familiar tools. The finding that mechanical problem solving is invariably defective in apraxic patients who commit errors with familiar tools is in good accord with clinical observations, as the gravity of their errors goes beyond what one would expect as a mere sequel of loss of access to instruction of use.