Skip to main content
Log in

Effects of short-term hand immobilization on anticipatory mechanism for tool use

  • Research
  • Published:
Psychological Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

Data are available at https://osf.io/zrjy7/?view_only=9de0416d93f84cd28a081c038ed72704.

References

  • Andres, M., Ostry, D. J., Nicol, F., & Paus, T. (2008). Time course of number magnitude interference during grasping. Cortex, 44, 414–419.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Avanzino, L., Bassolino, M., Pozzo, T., & Bove, M. (2011). Use-dependent hemispheric balance. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(9), 3423–3428.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Badets, A., Duville, M., & Osiurak, F. (2020). Tool-number interaction during a prospective memory task. Cognitive Processing, 21(4), 501–508.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Badets, A., & Osiurak, F. (2015). A goal-based mechanism for delayed motor intention: Considerations from motor skills, tool use and action memory. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 79, 345–360.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Badets, A., & Osiurak, F. (2017). The ideomotor recycling theory for tool use, language, and foresight. Experimental Brain Research, 235, 365–377

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Badets, A., Toussaint, L., Blandin, Y., & Bidet-Ildei, C. (2013). Interference effect of body shadow in action control. Perception, 42, 873–883.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barsalou, L. W. (1999). Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral Brain Sciences, 22(4), 577–609.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bidet-Ildei, C., Gimenes, M., Toussaint, L., Almecija, Y., & Badets, A. (2017). Sentence plausibility influences the link between action words and the perception of biological human movements. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 81, 806–813.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bongers, R. M., Michaels, C. F., & Smitsman, A. W. (2004). Variations of tool and task characteristics reveal that tool-use postures are anticipated. Journal of Motor Behavior, 36, 305–315.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brass, M., Bekkering, H., & Prinz, W. (2001). Movement observation affects movement execution in a simple response task. Acta Psychologica, 106, 3–22.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Elsner, B., & Hommel, B. (2001). Effect anticipation and action control. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 27, 229–240.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Facchini, S., Romani, M., Tinazzi, M., & Aglioti, S. M. (2002). Time-related changes of excitability of the human motor system contingent upon immobilisation of the ring and little fingers. Clinical Neurophysiology, 113, 367–375.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Greenwald, A. G. (1970). Sensory feedback mechanisms in performance control: With special reference to the ideomotor mechanism. Psychological Review, 77, 73–99.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Heathcote, A., Brown, S., & Mewhort, D. J. (2020). The power law repealed: The case for an exponential law of practice. Psychonomic Bulletin Review, 7(2), 185–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hommel, B., Müsseler, J., Aschersleben, G., & Prinz, W. (2001). The theory of event coding (TEC): a framework for perception and action planning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 849–878.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Huber, R., Ghilardi, M. F., Massimini, M., Ferrarelli, F., Riedner, B. A., Peterson, M. J., & Tononi, G. (2006). Arm immobilization causes cortical plastic changes and locally decreases sleep slow wave activity. Nature Neurosciences, 9(9), 1169–1176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isaac, A., Marks, D. F., & Russell, D. G. (1986). An instrument for assessing imagery of movement: The vividness of movement imagery questionnaire (VMIQ). Journal of Mental Imagery, 10, 23–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Janczyk, M., Yamaguchi, M., Proctor, R. W., & Pfister, R. (2015). Response-effect compatibility with complex actions: The case of wheel rotations. Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 77(3), 930–940.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaneko, F., Murakami, T., Onari, K., Kurumadani, H., & Kawaguchi, K. (2003). Decreased cortical excitability during motor imagery after disuse of an upper limb in humans. Clinical Neurophysiology, 114, 2397–2403.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kunde, W. (2001). Response-effect compatibility in manual choice reaction tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 27, 387–394.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kunde, W., Koch, I., & Hoffman, J. (2004). Anticipated action effects affect the selection, initiation, and execution of actions. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 57A(1), 87–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lissek, S., Wilimzig, C., Stude, P., Pleger, B., Kalisch, T., Maier, C., Sören, A. P., Volkmar, N., Tegenthoff, M., & Dinse, H. R. (2009). Immobilization impairs tactile perception and shrinks somatosensory cortical maps. Current Biology, 19, 837–842.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Massen, C., & Prinz, W. (2009). Movements, actions and tool-use actions: An ideomotor approach to imitation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 364, 2349–2358.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Meugnot, A., Agbangla, N. F., & Toussaint, L. (2016). Selective impairment of sensorimotor representations following short-term upper-limb immobilization. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(9), 1842–1850.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Moisello, C., Bove, M., Huber, R., Giovanni, A., Battaglia, F., Tononi, G., & Ghilardi, M. F. (2008). Short-term limb immobilization affects motor performance. Journal of Motor Behavior, 40, 165–176.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ngomo, S., Leonard, G., & Mercier, C. (2012). Influence of the amount of use on hand motor cortex representation: Effects of immobilization and motor training. Neuroscience, 220, 208–214.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Opie, G. M., Evans, A., Ridding, M. C., & Semmler, J. G. (2016). Short-term immobilization influences use-dependent cortical plasticity and fine motor performance. Neurosciences, 330, 246–256.

    Google Scholar 

  • Osiurak, F., & Badets, A. (2017). Use of tools and misuse of embodied cognition: Reply to Buxbaum (2017). Psychological Review, 124, 361–368.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, R. (2019). Effect-based action control with body-related effects: Implications for empirical approaches to ideomotor action control. Psychological Review, 126, 153–161.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pfister, R., Janczyk, M., Gressmann, M., Fournier, L. R., & Kunde, W. (2014). Good vibrations? Vibrotactile self-stimulation reveals anticipation of body-related action effects in motor control. Experimental Brain Research, 232, 847–854.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ranzini, M., Lugli, L., Anelli, F., Carbone, R., Nicoletti, R., & Borghi, A. M. (2011). Graspable objects shape number processing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 147.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenbaum, D. A., Cohen, R. G., Dawson, A. M., Jax, S. A., Meulenbroek, R. G., Van der Wel, R., & Vaughan, J. (2007). The posture-based motion planning framework: New findings related to object manipulation, moving around obstacles, moving in three spatial dimensions, and haptic tracking. In D. Sternad (Ed.), Progress in motor control (pp. 485–497). Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosenbaum, D. A., Marchak, F., Barnes, H. J., Vaughan, J., Slotta, J., & Jorgensen, M. (1990). Constraints for action selection: Overhand versus underhand grips. In M. Jeannerod (Ed.), Attention and performance XIII (pp. 321–342). Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scotto, C. R., Meugnot, A., Casiez, G., & Toussaint, L. (2020). Short-term sensorimotor deprivation impacts motor planning and control. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 14, 696.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Seki, K., Taniguchi, Y., & Narusawa, M. (2001). Alterations in contractile properties of human skeletal muscle induced by joint immobilization. Journal of Physiology, 530, 521–532.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Shin, Y. K., Proctor, R. W., & Capaldi, E. J. (2010). A review of contemporary ideomotor theory. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 943–974.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Toussaint, L., & Meugnot, A. (2013). Short-term limb immobilization affects cognitive motor processes. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39, 623–632.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Toussaint, L., Meugnot, A., & Bidet-Ildei, C. (2021). Short-term upper limb immobilization impairs grasp representation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(6), 1096–1102.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9(4), 625–636.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wunsch, K., Henning, A., Aschersleben, G., & Weigelt, M. (2013). A Systematic review of the end-state comfort effect in normally developing dhildren and in children with developmental disorders. Journal of Motor Learning and Development, 1, 59–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

The authors declare that they have made substantial contributions to the conception of the present study. They contributed to the acquisition, analyses and interpretation of data. They drafted and revised the work critically and approved the later version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lucette Toussaint.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

We have no known conflict of interest to disclose. The authors declare that they have no competing interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Ethical approval

All aspects of this study were performed in accordance with the ethical standards set out in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. The study was conducted in accordance with national standards and guidelines for the protection of human participants and was approved by the local ethics committee (Internal review code 202054). All participants gave their informed consent prior to their inclusion in the study and received either course credits or €20 for their participation. All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Toussaint, L., Bidet-Ildei, C., Scotto, C. et al. Effects of short-term hand immobilization on anticipatory mechanism for tool use. Psychological Research 87, 2407–2418 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01824-w

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01824-w

Navigation