Université de Poitiers, Université François-Rabelais de Tours, CNRS, CeRCA, UMR 7295, 86000, Poitiers, France.
Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France.
Psychol Res. 2023 Nov;87(8):2407-2418. doi: 10.1007/s00426-023-01824-w. Epub 2023 Apr 17.
The short-term immobilization of a limb such as the right arm can impair sensorimotor mechanisms, which in turn reduces motor control of this arm. However, it is not known whether immobilization also impairs the anticipatory mechanism for tool use without actual enactment. In two experiments, we asked participants to judge how they would use a tool in a particular environment (e.g., "Take the pencil to write on a sheet of paper"). Prior to this tool-use judgment task, some participants had been immobilized (right arm) for 24 h. Results revealed that compared to controls, immobilized participants performed more poorly on the tool-use judgment task (accuracy and response time) as well as in a manual dexterity task. As our tool-use judgment task involved anticipating the expected perceptual effect of using a tool to achieve an environmental goal (e.g., writing on a sheet of paper), our data are discussed in line with theories of motor control (e.g., ideomotor theory) that emphasize the expected perceptual consequences of the action.
肢体（如右臂）的短期固定会损害感觉运动机制，进而降低对该肢体的运动控制。然而，目前尚不清楚固定是否也会损害在没有实际实施的情况下对工具使用的预期机制。在两项实验中，我们要求参与者判断他们将如何在特定环境中使用工具（例如，“拿铅笔在一张纸上写字”）。在进行工具使用判断任务之前，一些参与者的右臂被固定了 24 小时。结果表明，与对照组相比，被固定的参与者在工具使用判断任务（准确性和反应时间）以及手动灵巧性任务上的表现更差。由于我们的工具使用判断任务涉及预期使用工具实现环境目标（例如，在纸上写字）的预期感知效果，因此我们的数据与强调动作预期感知后果的运动控制理论（例如，动作思维理论）一致。
