ArticleScientific reports2020
Looking to recognise: the pre-eminence of semantic over sensorimotor processing in human tool use.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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16 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- The influence of spatial frequencies, orientation, and familiarity on face stimuli integration.Attention, perception & psychophysics · 2026Article
- Causal reasoning guides visual exploration.Experimental brain research · 2026Article
- Deficits in reaching movements under visual interference as a novel diagnostic marker for mild cognitive impairment.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Location Coding of Tool-Object Pairs Based on Perceptual Grouping: Evidence from Object-Based Correspondence Effect.Journal of cognition · 2025Article
- On the functional brain networks involved in tool-related action understanding.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Tool use acquisition induces a multifunctional interference effect during object processing: evidence from the sensorimotor mu rhythm.Experimental brain research · 2023Article
- Action goals and the praxis network: an fMRI study.Brain structure & function · 2022Article
- The cortical thickness of the area PF of the left inferior parietal cortex mediates technical-reasoning skills.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Hazardous tools: the emergence of reasoning in human tool use.Psychological research · 2021Article
- Tool heads prime saccades.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- When the Action to Be Performed at the Stage of Retrieval Enacts Memory of Action Verbs.Experimental psychology · 2021Article
- Modulation of Working Memory and Resting-State fMRI by tDCS of the Right Frontoparietal Network.Neural plasticity · 2021Article
- Improvement of Apraxia With Augmented Reality: Influencing Pantomime of Tool Use via Holographic Cues.Frontiers in neurology · 2021Article
- Article
- On the Temporal Dynamics of Tool Use.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- Effects of Tool Novelty and Action Demands on Gaze Searching During Tool Observation.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
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.
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