Looking to recognise: the pre-eminence of semantic over sensorimotor processing in human tool use
Looking to recognise: the pre-eminence of semantic over sensorimotor processing in human tool use
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DOI：
10.1038/s41598-020-63045-0
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发表时间：
2020-04-09
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Brandimonte, Maria A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Federico, Giovanni;Brandimonte, Maria A.
除了语言和两足动物的运动，工具的使用是人类的一个特征活动。目前该领域的理论包括两种截然不同的方法：“基于操作”的理论，这是锚定在认知的观点，解释工具的使用来自过去的感觉运动经验，而“基于推理”的理论认为，人们对对象属性的原因，以解决日常生活中的问题。在这里，我们提出了两个眼动追踪实验的结果，在这些实验中，我们操纵了视觉感知环境（主题一致与不一致的物体-工具对）和任务的目标（自由观察或寻找识别）。我们发现，参与者表现出相反的工具的视觉探索模式，集中在主题一致的条件下的工具的操作区和主题不一致的条件下，其功能区。至关重要的是，以识别工具为目的的工具会产生对工具功能领域的更长时间的固定，而不管主题的一致性。此外，工具（而不是对象）的识别速度更快的主题一致的条件。这些结果强烈支持基于推理的理论的工具使用，因为它们表明，人们主要处理语义，而不是感觉运动信息与环境互动的代理的一致与目标的方式。语义处理的这种优势挑战了人类工具使用的主流认知观点。
Alongside language and bipedal locomotion, tool use is a characterizing activity of human beings. Current theories in the field embrace two contrasting approaches: "manipulation-based" theories, which are anchored in the embodied-cognition view, explain tool use as deriving from past sensorimotor experiences, whereas "reasoning-based" theories suggest that people reason about object properties to solve everyday-life problems. Here, we present results from two eye-tracking experiments in which we manipulated the visuo-perceptual context (thematically consistent vs. inconsistent object-tool pairs) and the goal of the task (free observation or looking to recognise). We found that participants exhibited reversed tools' visual-exploration patterns, focusing on the tool's manipulation area under thematically consistent conditions and on its functional area under thematically inconsistent conditions. Crucially, looking at the tools with the aim of recognising them produced longer fixations on the tools' functional areas irrespective of thematic consistency. In addition, tools (but not objects) were recognised faster in the thematically consistent conditions. These results strongly support reasoning-based theories of tool use, as they indicate that people primarily process semantic rather than sensorimotor information to interact with the environment in an agent's consistent-with-goal way. Such a pre-eminence of semantic processing challenges the mainstream embodied-cognition view of human tool use.