Negen James, Slater Heather, Nardini Marko
School of Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom.
Psychology Department, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2025 Jun 2;20(6):e0325074. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0325074. eCollection 2025.
When a person picks up an object, naturalistic cues inform fine motor planning that is reflected in early spikes in force rate changes. Naturalistic cues to weight can also create an illusion whereby a signal to being heavier leads to the object being perceived as lighter - for example, the size-weight illusion. The present study asked to what extent an arbitrary new auditory cue, one that signals object weight, participates in these effects. In Experiment 1, participants used the new signal to adjust both their peak grip force rates and peak load force rates while lifting an object, consistent with using it for efficient motor planning. This matched how they used a naturalistic visual size cue. In Experiment 2, a new audio cue to heavier weight led to a heavier reported weight - the opposite of a size-weight illusion, and opposite to how the same participants used a naturalistic visual size cue. Thus, while the newly learned audio-weight mapping had similar functional properties to its more familiar perceptual counterpart, it did not show the same signature of automatic processing. These results have implications for understanding the flexible use of new cues and for targeting the underlying mechanisms in order to augment human abilities.
当一个人拿起一个物体时，自然主义线索会为精细运动规划提供信息，这反映在力量变化率的早期峰值中。重量的自然主义线索也会产生一种错觉，即一个表明更重的信号会导致物体被感知为更轻——例如，大小-重量错觉。本研究探讨了一种任意的新听觉线索（即一种表明物体重量的线索）在多大程度上参与了这些效应。在实验1中，参与者在举起物体时使用新信号来调整他们的峰值握力率和峰值负载力率，这与将其用于高效运动规划一致。这与他们使用自然主义视觉大小线索的方式相匹配。在实验2中，一个表明更重重量的新音频线索导致报告的重量更重——这与大小-重量错觉相反，也与相同参与者使用自然主义视觉大小线索的方式相反。因此，虽然新学习的音频-重量映射与其更熟悉的感知对应物具有相似的功能特性，但它没有显示出相同的自动处理特征。这些结果对于理解新线索的灵活使用以及针对潜在机制以增强人类能力具有启示意义。
