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Grasping affordances with the other's hand: a TMS study
Pasquale Cardellicchio1, Corrado Sinigaglia, Marcello Costantini
1Department of Neuroscience and imaging, University of Chieti, Via dei Vestini 33, 66013 Chieti, Italy.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
|February 21, 2012
Summary
Our actions are influenced by how reachable objects are, even when others can interact with them. This suggests an interpersonal space representation impacts our perception of object affordances.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Social Psychology
- Motor Control
Background:
- Object affordances are typically linked to personal reachability.
- Social context significantly influences perception and action, yet its effect on object affordance processing is under-researched.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if the potential for others to act on an object influences our processing of its affordances.
- To explore the role of interpersonal bodily space representation in social interaction.
Main Methods:
- Used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to stimulate the left primary motor cortex.
- Recorded motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) in participants.
- Presented a handled object (mug) at varying distances from the participant and a virtual avatar.
Main Results:
- MEPs were highest when the mug was within the participant's reach.
- MEPs were also high when the mug was out of reach for the participant but within the avatar's reach.
- This indicates that the avatar's potential interaction influenced motor processing.
Conclusions:
- The findings suggest an "interpersonal bodily space" representation.
- This representation plays a crucial role in basic social interactions and object affordance perception.
- Social context dynamically modulates how we perceive and prepare to act on objects.
