Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience and Imaging, University G. d'Annunzio, Chieti, Italy.
Conscious Cogn. 2012 Sep;21(3):1551-7. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2012.06.010. Epub 2012 Jul 23.
The mental representation of one's own body does not necessarily correspond to the physical body. For instance, a dissociation between perceived and actual reach-ability has been shown, that is, individuals perceive that they can reach objects that are out of grasp. We presented participants with 3D pictures of objects located at four different distances, namely near-reaching space, actual-reaching space, perceived-reaching space and non-reaching space. Immediately after they were presented with function, manipulation, observation or pointing verbs and were required to judge if the verb was compatible with the object. Participants were faster with function and manipulation verbs than with observation and pointing verbs. Strikingly, with both function and manipulation verbs participants were faster when objects were presented in actual than the perceived reaching space. These findings suggest that our knowledge of the world is implicitly built online through behaviour, and is not necessarily reflected in explicit estimates or conscious representations.
个体对自身身体的心理表征不一定与实际身体相对应。例如，已经证明存在感知和实际可达范围之间的分离，也就是说，个体感知到他们可以够到无法触及的物体。我们向参与者展示了位于四个不同距离处的物体的 3D 图片，分别是近够范围、实际够到范围、感知够到范围和无法够到范围。在呈现给他们功能、操作、观察或指向动词后，要求他们判断动词是否与物体匹配。参与者在处理功能和操作动词时比处理观察和指向动词时更快。引人注目的是，对于功能和操作动词，当物体呈现于实际可达范围而非感知可达范围时，参与者的反应速度更快。这些发现表明，我们对世界的知识是通过行为在线隐含构建的，而不一定反映在明确的估计或有意识的表示中。
