using a stick does not necessarily alter judged distances or reachability用一根棍子不一定改变判断距离和可达性.pdfVIP

Using a Stick Does Not Necessarily Alter Judged Distances or Reachability 1,2 1 1 Denise D. J. de Grave *, Eli Brenner , Jeroen B. J. Smeets 1 Research Institute MOVE, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2 Unilever RD Vlaardingen, Vlaardingen, The Netherlands Abstract Background: It has been reported that participants judge an object to be closer after a stick has been used to touch it than after touching it with the hand. In this study we try to find out why this is so. Methodology: We showed six participants a cylindrical object on a table. On separate trials (randomly intermixed) participants either estimated verbally how far the object is from their body or they touched a remembered location. Touching was done either with the hand or with a stick (in separate blocks). In three different sessions, participants touched either the object location or the location halfway to the object location. Verbal judgments were given either in centimeters or in terms of whether the object would be reachable with the hand. No differences in verbal distance judgments or touching responses were found between the blocks in which the stick or the hand was used. Conclusion: Instead of finding out why the judged distance changes when using a tool, we found that using a stick does not necessarily alter judged distances or judgments about the reachability of objects. Citation: de Grave DDJ, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2011) Using a Stick Does Not Necessarily Alter Judged Distances or Reachability. PLoS ONE 6(2): e16697. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016697 Editor: Mark Greenlee, University of Regensburg, Germany Received September 27, 2010; Accepted