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An investigation into manual asymmetries in grasp behavior and kinematics during an object manipulation task

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Abstract

Manual asymmetries in the control of movements have been investigated in a variety of experimental paradigms. Initial studies demonstrated that the dominant right hand has advantages over the non-dominant left hand in many aspects of motor control. However, more recent studies have shown that the presence and extent of these asymmetries depends on the task context and accuracy demands. Typically, manual asymmetries on a motor planning and motor execution level are examined separately. However, given that recent research has demonstrated that specific task constraints do not influence both levels equally, the purpose of the present experiment was to investigate manual asymmetries in motor planning and execution. To this end, initial grasp behavior (motor planning) and kinematics (motor execution) were examined in thirteen right-handed participants during a unimanual grasping and placing task. We specifically manipulated grasping hand, target location, object end orientation, and object grasp time at the start location. There were three main findings. First, motor planning or movement execution was similar regardless of grasping hand. Second, prospectively planned actions were influenced by target location and the required end orientation of the object. Third, the amount of time spent in an initial posture did not influence initial grasp postures. However, it did alter the movement kinematics during the grasping (approach phase) and placing (transport phase) portion of the task. We posit that grasping and placing movements are comprised of an initial grasp and a transport component, which are differentially influenced by task constraints.

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Notes

  1. A Likert-type scale is commonly used to measure attitude, providing a given range of responses to a given statement. The response categories in Likert scales have a rank order, but the intervals between values cannot be presumed equal (Blaikie 2003).

  2. In order to control for perceptual effects associated with object perception, half of the subjects performed the task when the object was placed red end down at the start of the trial and the other half performed the task when the object was placed grey end down at the start of the trial.

  3. For all participants, this was the marker located on the styloid process of radius.

  4. The Woltring filter is commonly in the analysis of motion capture data and is equivalent to a double Butterworth filter. The benefit to the Woltring filter is that higher-order derivatives can be calculated from the analytic derivative of the polynomial spline.

  5. We are aware that the differences in kinematics between the rotation and no rotation trials are in part due to the initial grasp posture (thumb up versus thumb down). We would have examined differences in kinematics based on the initial grasp posture; however, a number (n = 6) of the participants used the same initial grasp posture in 100% of the trials for each condition (no rotation versus rotation). Thus, when pooling the data across initial grasp posture, we encountered an empty cell problem. We do not use partial deletion techniques (listwise or pairwise) to treat the data because such techniques would have reduced the dataset to seven participants, (and thus decreased statistical power).

  6. We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG; EC 277). Christian Seegelke gratefully acknowledges the financial support from Honda Research Institute Europe.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Neurocognition and Action Research Group, Faculty of Psychology and Sport Sciences, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

    Christian Seegelke, Charmayne M. L. Hughes & Thomas Schack

  2. Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics (CoR-Lab), Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

    Christian Seegelke, Charmayne M. L. Hughes & Thomas Schack

  3. Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC), Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

    Charmayne M. L. Hughes & Thomas Schack

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  1. Christian Seegelke
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  2. Charmayne M. L. Hughes
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Correspondence to Christian Seegelke.

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Seegelke, C., Hughes, C.M.L. & Schack, T. An investigation into manual asymmetries in grasp behavior and kinematics during an object manipulation task. Exp Brain Res 215, 65–75 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2872-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2872-z

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