1,721,079 research outputs found
Digital Intentions in the Fingers: I Know What You Are Doing with Your Smartphone
Full text linkEvery day, we make thousands of finger movements on the touchscreen of our smartphones. The same movements might be directed at various distal goals. We can type "What is the weather in Rome?" in Google to acquire information from a weather site, or we may type it on WhatsApp to decide whether to visit Rome with a friend. In this study, we show that by watching an agent's typing hands, an observer can infer whether the agent is typing on the smartphone to obtain information or to share it with others. The probability of answering correctly varies with age and typing style. According to embodied cognition, we propose that the recognition process relies on detecting subtle differences in the agent's movement, a skill that grows with sensorimotor competence. We expect that this preliminary work will serve as a starting point for further research on sensorimotor representations of digital actions
The relevance of signal timing in human-robot collaborative manipulation
No full textTo achieve a seamless human-robot collaboration, it is crucial that robots express their intentions without perturbating or interrupting the task that a human partner is performing at that moment. Although it has not received much attention so far, this issue is important when robots assist humans in physical and manipulation tasks. The main question addressed here is whether there is a more appropriate time to inform a human partner that a robot is requesting to pass them an object. This question is posed in a reference scenario where human individuals are involved in a continuous pick-and-place task that cannot be interrupted. Our findings showed that providing a cue at the beginning of a reach-to-grasp movement could severely interfere with the ongoing human action, increasing the number of errors made by humans, slowing down and degrading the smoothness of their arm movement, and deflecting their gaze. These disruptive interferences strongly decreased, until they disappeared, when the robot provided the cue to the human partners shortly after the participants picked up an object, identifying this as the best signaling timing. The results of this work showed how the signaling timing may have a decisive influence on the performances of the human-robot teamwork and contribute to understanding the mechanisms underpinning the phenomenon of cognitive-motor interference in humans
Implicit Associations between Adverbs of Place and Actions in the Physical and Digital Space
No full textNeuropsychological, behavioral, and neurophysiological evidence indicates that the coding of space as near and far depends on the involvement of different neuronal circuits. These circuits are recruited on the basis of functional parameters, not of metrical ones, reflecting a general distinction of human behavior, which alternatively attributes to the individual the role of agent or observer. Although much research in cognitive psychology was devoted to demonstrating that language and concepts are rooted in the sensorimotor system, no study has investigated the presence of implicit associations between different adverbs of place (far vs. near) and actions with different functional characteristics. Using a series of Implicit Association Test (IAT) experiments, we tested this possibility for both actions performed in physical space (grasp vs. look at) and those performed when using digital technology (content generation vs. content consumption). For both the physical and digital environments, the results showed an association between the adverb near and actions related to the role of agent, and between the adverb far and actions related to the role of observer. Present findings are the first experimental evidence of an implicit association between different adverbs of place and different actions and of the fact that adverbs of place also apply to the digital environment
Equal kinematics and visual context but different purposes: Observer's moral rules modulate motor resonance
No full textMotor resonance is considered to be an index of the automatic under threshold motor replica of the observed action. Similar actions may be quite different in terms of long-term goals (e.g., grasp to eat vs grasp to throw) and, recently, it has been proposed that the distal goal subtly modulates movements execution, and that observers automatically use these differences in kinematics to discriminate between different intentions. This interpretation is in line with computational approaches proposing that in the agent the generative process causes that intention shapes the kinematics, and in the observer the recognition process causes that the kinematics cues the intention. Given the close entanglement between the two processes, here we investigated whether the mere knowledge of agent's intentions induces in the observer a generative process able to modulate motor resonance. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation to examine motor evoked potentials in the Opponens Pollicis muscle to verify if observer's knowledge of agent's positive, negative, or neutral intentions on a third person influences corticospinal excitability during observation of the same action performed with equal kinematics, and in the same visual context. Results showed that the observation of an action executed with the intention to induce negative effects determined a reduction of motor resonance, revealing the presence of a specific inhibition to reenact an action that results in unpleasant consequences in the other. These data suggest that the information at the intention level activates a generative process which overcomes the replica of kinematics at the goal level, and shapes motor resonance according with observer's mind and not with agent's intention, revealing the possibility of a mere cognitive influence on motor resonance based on individual's ethical values. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Two-day-old newborns learn to discriminate accelerated-decelerated biological kinematics from constant velocity motion
No full textAlready in uterus the hand moves with the typical accelerated-decelerated kinematics of goal-directed actions and, from the twenty-second week of pregnancy, the unborn shows the ability to modulate the velocity of the movement depending on the nature of the target. According to the direct matching hypothesis, this motor knowledge may be sufficient to attune neonates' motion perception-like adults'-to biological kinematics. Using dots configuration motions which varied with respect to the kinematics of goal-directed actions, we observed that two-day-old human newborns did not show any spontaneous preference for either biological accelerated-decelerated motion or non-biological constant velocity motion when these were simultaneously presented in a standard preferential looking paradigm. In contrast, newborns preferred the biological kinematics after the repeated visual presentation of the different motions in a standard infant-control visual habituation paradigm. We propose that present results indicate that the relationship between perception and action does not require only action development but also the accumulation of sufficient perceptual experience. They also suggest a fast plasticity of the sensorimotor system in linking an already acquired motor knowledge with a newly experienced congruent visual stimulation
The mirror-neuron system
No full textA category of stimuli of great importance for primates, humans in particular, is that formed by actions done by other individuals. If we want to survive, we must understand the actions of others. Furthermore, without action understanding, social organization is impossible. In the case of humans, there is another faculty that depends on the observation of others' actions: imitation learning. Unlike most species, we are able to learn by imitation, and this faculty is at the basis of human culture. In this review we present data on a neurophysiological mechanism--the mirror-neuron mechanism--that appears to play a fundamental role in both action understanding and imitation. We describe first the functional properties of mirror neurons in monkeys. We review next the characteristics of the mirror-neuron system in humans. We stress, in particular, those properties specific to the human mirror-neuron system that might explain the human capacity to learn by imitation. We conclude by discussing the relationship between the mirror-neuron system and language
Proactive gaze is present during biological and non-biological motion observation
No full textOthers' action observation activates in the observer a coordinated hand-eye motor program, covert for the hand (i.e. motor resonance), and overt for the eye (i.e. proactive gaze), similar to that of the observed agent. The biological motion hypothesis of action anticipation claims that proactive gaze occurs only in the presence of biological motion, and that kinematic information is sufficient to determine the anticipation process. The results of the present study did not support the biological motion hypothesis of action anticipation. Specifically, proactive gaze was present during observation of both a biological accelerated-decelerated motion and a non-biological constant velocity motion (Experiment 1), in the presence of a barrier able to restrict differences between the two kinematics to the motion profile of individual markers prior to contact (Experiment 2), but only if an object was present at the end point of the movement trajectory (Experiment 3). Furthermore, proactive gaze was found independently of the presence of end effects temporally congruent with the instant in which the movement stopped (Experiments 4, and 5). We propose that the involvement of the observer's motor system is not restricted to when the agent moves with natural kinematics, and it is mandatory whenever the presence of an agent or a goal is evident, regardless of physical appearance, natural kinematics, and the possibility to identify the action behind the stimulus
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