Tool Integration and Dynamic Touch
J. Brendan Ritchie, Thomas A. Carlson · Psychological Science · 2013
Tool integration is important to how people perceive their bodies in relation to the objects (“tools”) that they use to manipulate the world around them. Better under-standing the nature of this integration has the potential for clinical benefits. For example, better understanding how people integrate representations into the body schema may allow for the development of more effective prosthetics for missing limbs. Several results have been interpreted as supporting the existence of tool integra-tion (see Maravita & Iriki, 2004, for an early review). In Carlson, Alvarez, Wu, and Verstraten (2010), a previous study using positive afterimages, evidence was presented from which three conclusions were drawn: first, that tool integration for simple, grasped objects was rapid; second, that this assimilation occurred without any prior training; and third, that the same assimilation did not