Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Child Health, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.
Psychol Res. 2024 Nov;88(8):2432-2443. doi: 10.1007/s00426-024-02002-2. Epub 2024 Jul 9.
The integration of numerical information with motor processes has emerged as a fascinating area of investigation in both animal and human cognition. The interest in a sensorimotor number system has recently generated neurophysiological and psychophysical evidence which combine to highlight the importance of motor functions in the encoding of numerical information. Nevertheless, several key questions remain, such as the influence of non-numerical motor parameters over numerical perception. Here we tested the role of physical effort, a parameter positively correlated with the number of actions, in modulating the link between hand-actions and visual numerosity perception. Effort was manipulated during sensorimotor adaptation as well as during a new actions-estimation paradigm. The results of Experiment 1 shows that physical effort in the absence of actions (passive effort) is not sufficient to activate the sensorimotor number system, indicating that self-produced actions are instead necessary. Further experiments demonstrated that effort is marginally integrated during motor adaptation (Experiment 2) but discarded when estimating the number of self-produced hand actions (Experiment 3). Overall, the results indicate that the sensorimotor number system is largely fed by the number of discrete actions rather than the amount of effort but also indicates that effort (under specific circumstances) might be integrated. These findings provide novel insights into the sensorimotor numerical integration, paving the way for future investigations, such as on its functional role.
数值信息与运动过程的整合已成为动物和人类认知领域令人着迷的研究领域。对感觉运动数量系统的兴趣最近产生了神经生理学和心理物理学证据，这些证据结合起来强调了运动功能在数值信息编码中的重要性。然而，仍有几个关键问题悬而未决，例如非数值运动参数对数值感知的影响。在这里，我们测试了物理努力（与动作数量呈正相关的参数）在调节手动作与视觉数量感知之间的联系中的作用。在感觉运动适应过程中以及在新的动作估计范式中操纵了努力。实验 1 的结果表明，没有动作的物理努力（被动努力）不足以激活感觉运动数量系统，这表明自我产生的动作是必要的。进一步的实验表明，在运动适应过程中，努力是边际整合的（实验 2），但在估计自我产生的手部动作数量时被忽略（实验 3）。总体而言，这些结果表明，感觉运动数量系统主要由离散动作的数量而不是努力的程度来提供，但也表明在特定情况下，努力可能会被整合。这些发现为感觉运动数值整合提供了新的见解，为未来的研究铺平了道路，例如其功能作用的研究。
