School of Psychological Science, Oregon State University, 2950 SW Jefferson Dr., Reed Lodge, Corvallis, OR, 97331, USA.
Exp Brain Res. 2023 Sep;241(9):2275-2285. doi: 10.1007/s00221-023-06669-8. Epub 2023 Aug 8.
Internal representations of the body have received considerable attention in recent years, particularly in the context of tool-use. Results have supported the notion that these representations are plastic and tool-use engenders an extension of the internal representation of the arm. However, the limitations of the literature underlying this tool embodiment process have not been adequately considered or tested. For example, there is some evidence that tool-use effects do not extend beyond simplistic tool-use tasks. To further clarify this issue, 66 participants engaged in a period of tool-augmented reaches in a speeded gather-and-sort task. If task characteristics inherent to simplistic tasks are relevant to putative embodiment effects, it was predicted that there would be no effect of tool-use on tactile distance judgments or forearm bisections. A Bayesian analysis found considerable support for the null hypothesis in both outcome measures, suggesting that some of the evidence for tool embodiment may be based in task characteristics inherent in the narrow range of tool-use tasks used to study them, rather than a tool incorporation process. Potential sources of influence stemming from these characteristics are discussed.
近年来，内部身体表示受到了相当多的关注，特别是在工具使用的背景下。结果支持了这样一种观点，即这些表示是可塑的，并且工具使用会导致手臂内部表示的扩展。然而，尚未充分考虑或测试支撑这种工具体现过程的文献的局限性。例如，有一些证据表明，工具使用效果不会超出简单的工具使用任务。为了进一步澄清这个问题，66 名参与者参与了一项在加速的采集和分类任务中使用工具增强的伸展任务。如果与假定的体现效应相关的固有任务特征是简单任务的特征，那么可以预测，在触觉距离判断或前臂二分法中，工具使用不会产生影响。贝叶斯分析在这两个结果测量中都发现了对零假设的大量支持，这表明一些工具体现的证据可能基于用于研究这些工具的狭窄范围的工具使用任务中固有的任务特征，而不是工具整合过程。讨论了源自这些特征的潜在影响源。
