Margaux Larre-Perez (Institut Jean Nicod & LPP) will be our next speaker. She is jointly supervised by Pierre Jacob and Thérèse Collins.
Title: "Stroop-like
interference between structural and functional hand gestures within objects"
Date, Time, Place: 22/03/2013, 4pm, Salle de Réunion du Pavillon Jardin
Abstract: Man-made objects may elicit at least two kinds
of hand gestures: structural hand
gestures associated with the shape-based properties of objects, and functional hand gestures associated with
their typical usage. A number of behavioral studies have examined the relationship
between these action classes, but some questions remain unanswered; in
particular, whether they are both automatically recruited when viewing a
particular object, and if they are, whether they may compete with each other.
We adapted a Stroop-like paradigm to assess action representations afforded by
man-made objects, and the interference within the same object between its
associated structural and functional hand actions. In a practice phase,
subjects first learned to associate either a “clench” or a “poke” movement with
a given color (green or red). In the test phase, subjects executed these
learned movements in response to the color of several objects associated with
both hand actions (e.g. a calculator or a soap dispenser) that were displayed
on a computer screen. Three different object colorations were presented: the
object was entirely red or green (“baseline” condition), or was partially
colored in such a way that the color and the colored part were congruent (e.g.
a red calculator key or a green calculator body) or incongruent (e.g. the
opposite combination). Difference in initiation times
between these conditions will shed light on what kinds of gestures are evoked
by the visual image of graspable objects and if these gesture representations
are automatically elicited.
