Movement consistency during repetitive tool use action

Abstract

The consistency and repeatability of movement patterns has been of long-standing interest in locomotor biomechanics, but less well explored in other domains. Tool use is one of such a domain; while the complex dynamics of the human-tool-environment system have been approached from various angles, to date it remains unknown how the rhythmicity of repetitive tool-using action emerges. To examine whether the spontaneously adopted movement frequency is a variable susceptible to individual execution approaches or emerges as constant behaviour, we recorded sawing motion across a range of 14 experimental conditions using various manipulations. This was compared to free and pantomimed arm movements. We found that a mean (SD) sawing frequency of 2.0 (0.4) Hz was employed across experimental conditions. Most experimental conditions did not significantly affect the sawing frequency, signifying the robustness of this spontaneously emerging movement. Free horizontal arm translation and miming of sawing was performed at half the movement frequency with more than double the excursion distance, showing that not all arm movements spontaneously emerge at the observed sawing parameters. Observed movement frequencies across all conditions could be closely predicted from movement time reference data for generic arm movements found in the Methods Time Measurement literature, highlighting a generic biomechanical relationship between the time taken for a given distance travelled underlying the observed behaviour. We conclude that our findings lend support to the hypothesis that repetitive movements during tool use are executed according to generic and predictable musculoskeletal mechanics and constraints, albeit in the context of the general task (sawing) and environmental constraints such as friction, rather than being subject to task-specific control or individual cognitive schemata.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0173281
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Advanced Services Group
College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School
Additional Information: © 2017 Starke, Baber. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Publication ISSN: 1932-6203
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 17:45
Date Deposited: 14 Apr 2021 11:25
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://journal ... al.pone.0173281 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2017-03-09
Accepted Date: 2017-02-03
Authors: Starke, Sandra (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-1434-7094)
Baber, Christopher

Download

[img]

Version: Published Version

License: Creative Commons Attribution

| Preview

Export / Share Citation


Statistics

Additional statistics for this record