Unflinching Predictions: Anticipatory Crossmodal Interactions are Unaffected by the Current Hand Posture
- Johannes Lohmann, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
- Martin Butz, Computer Science; Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany
AbstractAccording to theories of anticipatory behavior control, action planning and control is realized by activating desired goal states. From an event-predictive perspective, this activation should focus sensorimotor processing on expected, upcoming event boundaries. Previous studies have shown that peripersonal hand space (PPHS) is remapped to the future hand location in a grasping task before the movement commences. Here, we investigated if the current hand posture interferes with the anticipatory remapping of PPHS. Participants had to grasp virtual bottles from two differently oriented starting postures. During the prehension, they received a vibrotactile stimulus on their right index finger or on their thumb, while a visual stimulus appeared at the bottle, either matching the future finger position, or not. Participants had to name the stimulated finger. While the hand posture affected verbal response times, the anticipatory remapping remained unchanged. Apparently, the predictive processes that realize the anticipatory remapping, generalize over initial hand postures.