Psychology

Humans underestimate the movement range of their own hands

A. Pilacinski, A. Vandenberghe, et al.

This compelling study conducted by Artur Pilacinski, Antoine Vandenberghe, Gabriella Andrietta, and Gilles Vannuscorps delves into our surprising underestimation of hand movement range. Discover how this phenomenon may serve as an adaptive strategy balancing safety and efficiency during uncertain movements.... show more

Abstract

Motor planning and motor imagery are assumed to use veridical internal representations of the biomechanical properties of our limbs. Here, we report that people underestimate their hands’ range of motion. We used two tasks probing representations of own motion range, estimation and imagery, in which participants were supposed to judge their rotational hand movement ranges. In both tasks, participants’ judgments were underestimated in three out of four cardinal directions. We suggest that this representational bias provides an optimal balance between movement efficiency and safety in face of the inherently stochastic nature of movement execution.

Publisher

Communications Psychology

Published On

Nov 01, 2024

Authors

Artur Pilacinski, Antoine Vandenberghe, Gabriella Andrietta, Gilles Vannuscorps

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00153-x

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