Exp Brain Res (2008) 184:383–389 DOI 10.1007/s00221-007-1106-x

R ES EA R C H A R TI CLE

Planning for manual positioning: the end-state comfort eVect for manual abduction–adduction Wei Zhang · David A. Rosenbaum

Received: 18 June 2007 / Accepted: 13 August 2007 / Published online: 29 August 2007 © Springer-Verlag 2007

Abstract How people take hold of objects depends on what they plan to do with them. Such anticipatory eVects reXect motor planning. One class of such anticipatory eVects is the end-state comfort eVect, a tendency to take hold of an object in an awkward way to permit a more comfortable, or more easily controlled, Wnal position. Here we asked whether the end-state comfort eVect extends to manual abduction–adduction, a kinematic dimension that has not previously been studied in connection with the endstate comfort eVect. Our participants brought their right hand from a start position (hand resting on a table) to an intermediate position (hand on top of a covered bowl that had an arrow extending from it) and then slid the bowl to a Wnal position such that the arrow had to occupy a target range. We found that participants placed their hands on the bowl at an angle that was inversely related to the Wnal angle of the hand. This relation was uninXuenced by whether participants chose between two possible Wnal positions rather than being told which Wnal position to adopt. In addition, there was no eVect of the rejected Wnal position on the intermediate or Wnal hand angles adopted. The results provide evidence for the generality of the end-state comfort eVect and for the Xexibility of motor planning in general.

W. Zhang Department of Kinesiology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA e-mail: [email protected] D. A. Rosenbaum (&) Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Keywords Motor planning · Pointing · Hand movements · End-state comfort eVect

Introduction Previous research has shown that placement of the hand on objects depend on what participants plan to do with them. The form of this dependency of greatest interest here is the end-state comfort eVect, a tendency to take hold of an object in an awkward posture to permit a more comfortable, or more easily controlled, Wnal posture once the object is brought to its target position (for a review, see Rosenbaum et al. 2006). The end-state comfort eVect has been demonstrated in studies where participants controlled hand pronation or supination when taking hold of a cylinder that was to be moved to another position. In those studies, participants tended to adopt awkward postures (i.e., joint angles at or near the extremes of the joint angle range) if those postures permitted comfortable postures (i.e., joint angles at or near the middle of the joint angle range) at the end of the transport task (Rosenbaum et al. 1990, 1993). The end-state comfort eVect has also been demonstrated in studies where participants took hold of a vertically oriented cylinder to transport it to a target platform of variable height. The grasp height on the cylinder was inversely related to the height to which the cylinder would be carried (Cohen and Rosenbaum 2004; Rosenbaum et al. 2006; Weigelt et al., in press). These results, like the results concerning hand pronation–supination, indicate that participants anticipate the demands of future body states when they prepare to manipulate objects. The present study was designed to address three new questions about the end-state comfort eVect. The Wrst question

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concerned a biomechanical dimension that has not been previously studied in this context. The second and third questions concerned the processes underlying the eVect. All three questions pertained to the simple task of moving the hand from a start position (hand resting on a table) to an intermediate position (same hand placed on a covered plastic bowl) to a Wnal position (hand still placed on the bowl but with the bowl pushed to a new position). The three questions were as follows: (1) Does the end-state comfort eVect extend to abduction–adduction of the hand? (2) Does the end-state comfort eVect hold if participants can choose between two possible Wnal object positions as opposed to being told which Wnal object position must be adopted? (3) If the end-state comfort eVect does hold when participants can choose between two possible Wnal positions, is there an eVect of the Wnal position that was in the choice pair but was not chosen? In the following, we comment on the motivations behind these three questions and then provide a more detailed description of the experiment we did to address them. Our purpose behind the Wrst question was to evaluate the biomechanical generalizability of the end-state comfort eVect. We did so by considering a biomechanical dimension that has not been studied before in connection with the eVect, namely, adduction–abduction of the hand. Adducting the hand is achieved by decreasing the angle between the thumb and the radius bone of the forearm. Abducting the hand is achieved by increasing the angle between the thumb and the radius bone of the forearm. If the end-state comfort eVect applies to adduction–abduction, one would expect participants to adopt more extreme adduction or abduction angles when they take hold of an object that they will move to a new position than when they have completed that movement. To test this prediction, we asked our participants to place their right hand on a covered plastic bowl which had an arrow protruding from it (Fig. 1). The participants knew

Fig. 1 Experimental setup. ReXective markers on the participant’s hand and on the handle arrow are not shown

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Exp Brain Res (2008) 184:383–389

before placing their hands on the bowl that they would slide the bowl to another position. We hypothesized that if the end-state comfort eVect generalizes to abduction–adduction, participants would vary their hand placement angles on the bowl so their hand angles at the end of the positioning task would be at or near the middle of the abduction– adduction range. This meant that awkward angles would sometimes be adopted on the bowl at its initial position. The second question was whether the end-state eVect would be obtained when participants could choose between two possible Wnal object positions as opposed to being told which Wnal object position they had to adopt. In all previous studies of the end-state comfort eVect, participants were told which Wnal object position was required. For example, participants in previous studies were told how a rod should be oriented at the end of a transport maneuver, or they were told where a vertical rod should be placed when it was moved from one platform to another. The previous studies do not let us infer whether the end-state comfort eVect would hold when there are two possible Wnal object positions rather than one. Theoretically, this question is important because one could hypothesize that the need to deal with more than one explicit Wnal-position alternatives could “confuse the system,” causing the end-state comfort eVect to disappear. Conversely, one could hypothesize that the motor planning system is not “easily confused” and the need to deal with more than one explicit Wnal-position alternative still leaves the system able to show the end-state comfort eVect. To address this issue, we included a condition in which participants could choose between two possible Wnal object positions. We called this the two-target task. To evaluate performance in the two-target task, we also included a traditional one-target task. We predicted that in the two-target task, participants would choose Wnal positions that would leave their hands as close as possible to the middle of the abduction–adduction range of motion. In this connection, we also predicted that the Wnal hand angles they would adopt in the two-target task would be no diVerent from the Wnal hand angles they would adopt when they brought the manipulandum to the same target positions in the one-target task. Furthermore, we predicted that in the service of this objective, participants would exhibit the end-state comfort eVect at the intermediate position both in the two-target task and in the one-target task. The third question we asked was whether the intermediate positions in the two-target task would be any diVerent from the intermediate positions in the one-target task for the same target conditions. At issue here was the question whether participants’ intermediate hand angles would depend on what Wnal positions they did not choose as well as on what Wnal positions they did choose. The idea was that the participants’ behavior might not just reXect the

Exp Brain Res (2008) 184:383–389

plans they settled on but also on the plans they considered but rejected.

Methods Participants Eighteen healthy undergraduate volunteers (nine males and nine females) participated in exchange for payment or course credit. The participants’ weight averaged 70.2 § 19.2 kg, and their height averaged 1.7 § 0.1 m. All participants declared that they were right-handed based on their handwriting preferences. All participants also gave informed consent according to the procedures approved by the OYce for Research Protection of Pennsylvania State University. Apparatus The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1. The manipulandum was a covered plastic bowl, 9-cm high, whose top had a diameter of 18 cm and whose bottom had a diameter of 15 cm. The bottom rim of the bowl, where the sides met the base of the bowl, was rounded, and the bottom of the bowl was Xat, allowing the bowl to slide with very little friction on the smooth, high-sheen tabletop used in this experiment. We attached spongy material to the cover of the bowl to create a high-friction but comfortable surface on which participants could place their hands. The spongy material was a computer mouse pad, cut circularly to Wt snugly into the lid of the bowl. The thickness of the trimmed mouse pad was such that the top of the pad was Xush with the top of the lid. We attached a large rigid arrow to the bowl by cutting a slit in the bowl’s side, 7 cm from the top of the bowl, and inserting the base of the arrow into the bowl, where we glued it to the bowl’s inner bottom. The cardboard arrow extended 15 cm from the side of the bowl to the tip of the arrow. The width of the arrow shaft between the bowl and the tip of the arrow was 5 cm. The width of the base of the arrow tip was 8 cm and the distance of the straight line joining the tip of the arrow to the base of the arrow tip was 5 cm. The tip of the arrow was allowed to droop down onto the table. Two reXective markers were attached to the arrow along its length. The weight of the entire manipulandum was 106 gm. The targets were six plastic cups placed sideways, with their open ends facing the center of the workspace, 22° apart from one another in a semi-circle. The cups were taped tightly to the surface of the table so that none of them would move. The target angles were 134°, 112°, 90°, 68°, and 46°, for targets 1–5, respectively (see Fig. 1). The

385

radius of the imaginary circle on which the semi-circle lay was 40 cm, and the center of the imaginary circle corresponded to the location occupied by the center of the bowl at its home position. The linear distance between the centers of each pair of targets was 25.4 cm. The kinematic data were recorded with a Qualisys Motion Capture 3-camera system (MCU 240, Qualysis Medical AB, Gothenburg, Sweden). Six reXective markers were used for this purpose. Four of the markers were attached to the dorsal side of the participant’s right hand at the following four anatomical landmarks: on the third distal phalanx, on the third articulatio metacarpophalangea, on the median radiocarpal, and on the lateral radiocarpal. The other two markers were attached to the handle arrow, as mentioned above. One of the markers was attached to the tip of the arrow (13 cm from the edge of the bowl). The other marker was attached to the arrow, 3 cm from the edge of the bowl. The Qualisys cameras were placed 2–3 m from the participant, 2 m above the Xoor. The Qualisys sampling frequency was 240 Hz. Procedure During testing, the subject sat in a chair facing the testing table with his/her right shoulder aligned with the center of the target set. Each participant performed three tasks. In each task, before it was performed, the bowl stood at the home position, with the arrow pointing straight ahead to target 3. At the start of each trial the participant placed his or her right hand in a relaxed, natural resting position (palm-side down) on the table, as per instructions from the experimenter. In the control task, the participant was simply asked to put his or her hand on the top of the bowl in a comfortable position with the Wngers extended. The purpose of the control task was to obtain each participant’s neutral initial hand angle. In the one-target task, the experimenter named one of the Wve targets and the participant then put his or her right hand on the bowl and slid it to bring the arrow to the named target. Each target was named once per participant, in a random order for each participant. When the bowl was brought to a target, it was supposed to be brought up against the two cups on either side of the target. In the two-target task, the experimenter named a pair of targets and the participant then put his or her right hand on the bowl and slid the bowl to whichever of the two named targets he or she preferred. Each of the ten possible pairs of targets was named once per participant in a random order for each participant, with the order of the named targets being random in each trial. All participants were tested in the control task Wrst, in the one-target task second, and in the two-target task third.

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Data processing The six markers’ three-dimensional coordinates were exported using the software package of the Qualisys Motion Capture system. Data processing was performed oV-line with MATLAB 7.0, Excel, and Minitab. The main measures were each participants’ hand angle when the hand was placed on the bowl as it occupied the home position (what we called the hand’s intermediate angle) and each participants’ hand angle when the bowl was brought to its Wnal position (what we called the hand’s Wnal angle). We also recorded the arrow angle at the bowl’s home and Wnal positions. All angles were deWned relative to the imaginary line parallel to the edge of the table closest to the participant’s coronal plane. Angles increased in the counterclockwise direction.

Exp Brain Res (2008) 184:383–389

SE) and corresponding mean Wnal hand angles (§1 SE) when participants were told which single target was required. Participants always went to the indicated target. When the required target angles were 134°, 112°, 90°, 68°, and 46°, the mean Wnal hand angles were 153°, 119°, 93°, 69°, and 43°, respectively. All of the mean Wnal hand angles were close to the target angles, except for target 1 (153° for the Wnal hand angle versus 134° for the target angle). We attribute this disparity to the fact that wrist adduction may have been comfortable in this arm Wnal position. Of greater importance given our central aims, the intermediate hand angles decreased as the Wnal hand angle increased (see Fig. 2). A one-way repeated measures analysis of variance that evaluated the eVect of the Wve targets on the intermediate hand angle conWrmed that the target eVect was statistically signiWcant, F (4, 75) = 31.40, P < 0.001.

Results

Two-target task

The data of one of the 18 participant (participant no. 17) was excluded because that participant did not follow the task instructions. All the data from the remaining 17 participants were included in the results reported below.

Table 1 shows the number of participants who chose one target rather than the other in the two-target task. (All participants always picked one of the two named targets and there was no indication that the order in which the targets was named—either Wrst or second—aVected target choice.) Table 1 also shows, of the participants who chose a given target, the number whose intermediate hand angles fell within the range of intermediate hand angles for the same target in the one-target task. Two conclusions can be drawn from Table 1. First, participants preferred some targets over others (see Fig. 3). Target 3 (mean Wnal hand angle = 93°) was the most popular choice, target 2 (mean Wnal hand angle = 119°) was the second most popular choice, target 4 (mean Wnal hand angle = 69°) was the third most popular choice, target 1 (mean Wnal hand angle = 153°) was the fourth most popular

Control task When participants merely had to put their hand on the cylinder, the angle of the hand on the cylinder had a mean value of 92.18° and a standard error of §1.28° (see Fig. 2). One-target task Figure 2 shows the performance data from the one-target task. Here we plot the mean intermediate hand angles (§1

Table 1 Of the number of participants who chose one target rather than the other in the two-target task (to the right of the slash), the number whose hand angles fell within the range of the intermediate hand angle for the same target in the one-target task (to the left of the slash) Option

T1

Fig. 2 Mean intermediate hand angle (§1 SE) as a function of mean Wnal hand angle (§1 SE). The long dashed line is the mean hand placement angle in the control condition, where no subsequent target was called for. The long solid lines represent §1 SE for that mean

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Chosen

Sum

T1

T2

T3

T4

T5



13/14

13/14

8/12

4/5

38/45

T2

3/3



10/11

5/5

3/4

21/23

T3

3/3

5/6



4/4

0/0

12/13

T4

5/5

12/12

13/13



1/2

31/32

T5

12/12

12/13

17/17

13/15



54/57

Sum

23/23

42/45

53/55

30/36

8/11

156/170

The slash is not a divide sign

Exp Brain Res (2008) 184:383–389

387

5

Rank

4

3

2

1 -60

-40

-20

0

20

40

90 Degrees Minus Final Hand Angle

Fig. 3 Popularity rank of targets as a function of the diVerence between the straight-ahead Wnal hand angle (90°) and the mean of the Wnal hand angle of that target. Rank 1 is popular. Rank 5 is least popular

choice, and target 5 (mean Wnal hand angle = 43°) was the least popular choice. In general, participants preferred targets that were as close as possible to the straight-ahead, and were biased to favor left targets over right targets. This relation is shown in graphical form in Fig. 3. The second conclusion that could be drawn from Table 1 is that the intermediate hand angles that participants adopted in the two-target task were, for the most part, similar to the intermediate hand angles that they adopted in the one-target task. Of the 170 intermediate hand placements that participants made in the two-target task, 156 or 91.8% were within the range of intermediate hand angles adopted in the corresponding one-target task. The 14 hand placements that fell outside the range were all within 1.57 standard deviations of the means of their respective ranges in the one-target task. In fact, 13 of these 14 hand placements were within 0.63 standard deviations of the means of their respective ranges. Because 95% of the data lie within §1.96 standard deviations of the mean (of a normal distribution), the foregoing results indicate that the intermediate hand angles were not diVerent in the two-target task and in the one-target task when the same Wnal target angles were going to be reached.

Discussion The present experiment was designed to address three main questions. First, does the choice of an intermediate position in a two-step manual positioning sequence depend on the required Wnal position when the relevant biomechanical dimension is abduction–adduction of the hand? Second,

does the end-state comfort eVect hold if participants can choose between two possible Wnal object positions? Third, does the choice of a Wnal position as well as an intermediate position reXect sensitivity to rejected Wnal-position options? We discuss our Wndings concerning each of these questions and then oVer some concluding remarks. With regard to the Wrst question, the answer is Yes: the end-state comfort eVect was shown here for manual abduction–adduction. Participants placed their hands on the manipulandum at an angle that was inversely related to the angle they would subsequently adopt after sliding the manipulandum to the target position. By turning the hand counterclockwise when the manipulandum would later be turned clockwise or by turning the hand clockwise when the manipulandum would later be turned counterclockwise, participants avoided extreme joint angles at the ends of the target placements. This outcome is reminiscent of Wndings of other object manipulation studies in which participants pronated or supinated the hand or adopted grasp heights that helped them later avoid extreme joint angles. For a review, see Rosenbaum et al. (2006). With regard to the second question, the answer is also Yes: when participants could choose which Wnal position they would adopt (i.e., which target they would move to) they still exhibited the end-state comfort eVect. Thus, having to deal with more than one Wnal-position alternatives did not “confuse the system.” This conclusion was supported by the fact that the end-state comfort eVect was found in the two-target task and also by the fact that the targets that were chosen in the two-target task enabled participants to avoid extreme joint angles when it was possible for them to do so, as shown in Fig. 3. With regard to the third question, the answer is No: There was no indication that the choice of an intermediate position reXected sensitivity to the rejected Wnal-position option. Thus, the present data do not support a model in which movement choices, once they have been made, reXect their history. Apparently, once a movement choice has occurred, it runs its course in the same way regardless of what other movement (or Wnal position) was considered. This conclusion receives further, indirect, support from a study by Fischman (1998), which showed that when participants were free to pick up a horizontally oriented rod with either the left hand or the right hand in order to stand the rod on one end or the other, participants consistently took hold of the rod with whichever hand allowed for a comfortable initial grasp as well as a comfortable Wnal grasp posture. Thus, participants were not wedded to using a particular hand, but instead were willing to switch hands in order to achieve comfortable initial and Wnal grasp postures. If participants had been confused about which action to perform given the many alternatives available to them, they would not have shown such a clear preference.

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Caveats are required in connection with all three of these conclusions. We raise these cautions, beginning with the third question and working back to the Wrst. Regarding the last conclusion, we cannot say that it would never be possible to Wnd evidence for choice history eVects in movement kinematics. It is well known that there are hysteresis (“history”) eVects in motor control. Critical Xuctuation frequencies in bimanual oscillation depend on whether driving frequencies increase or decrease (Kelso 1984). Similarly, transition heights for grasping a horizontally oriented bar with an overhand grip (pronation) or with an underhand grip (supination) depend on whether successively tested placement heights increase or decrease (Rosenbaum and Jorgensen 1992). Similar results have been reported by Fischman et al. (2003) and Short and Cauraugh (1977). All of these are sequential eVects, however, rather than choice eVects. They bear on the question of whether the past matters in the way movements are carried out, but they do not show whether the way a movement is carried out depends on the alternative movement that was possible at the time. There is evidence that the processes that lead up to the choice of a given movement depend on what the alternative movements are. SpeciWcally, the choice reaction to initiate a movement depends on the alternative possible movements (Kornblum 1965; Rosenbaum 1980; Rosenbaum et al. 1984). Conceivably, the way the hand approaches an object to be manipulated also depends on what the alternative possible movements are. Data from tasks like the one presented here could be analyzed to pursue this question. The present experiment was not run in a way that makes such an analysis very practicable, however. With respect to the second conclusion—that participants displayed the end-state comfort eVect when they could choose between Wnal positions—that conclusion rests on the assumption that hand angles at or near the middle of the range of motion on the abduction–adduction dimension are more comfortable than hand angles at the extremes of this dimension. This assumption can be tested directly using psychophysical estimates of comfort (cf. Rosenbaum et al. 1993; Rossetti et al. 1994). Finally, with respect to the Wrst conclusion oVered above, that participants exhibited the end-state comfort for abduction–adduction, it is important to mention that while the end-state comfort eVect is a general phenomenon, its generality having been extended in the present study, it is an eVect that depends on the relative precision requirements of ending versus starting movements. The end-state comfort eVect can be eliminated when participants can grab a handle to be turned to a Wnal position and the handle latches automatically at the Wnal position (Rosenbaum et al. 1996). In contrast, if the same handle is grabbed and turned to the same Wnal position but participants must carefully control

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Exp Brain Res (2008) 184:383–389

the Wnal position, they reliably exhibit the end-state comfort eVect. Thus, the end-state comfort eVect depends on how much control is required at the end of the task versus at the beginning. If more control is required at the end, one obtains a strong end-state comfort eVect, but if more control is not required at the end, one does not necessarily obtain a strong end-state comfort eVect. For a demonstration of this tradeoV in connection with choice of grasp height, see Rosenbaum et al. (2006). It is possible, then, that the end-state comfort eVect as reXected on the abduction–adduction dimension would be eliminated if the precision requirements of Wnal positioning were reduced. The present positioning task required quite a bit of Wnal-position precision. Participants had to slide the arrow into the target gap, making sure it went into the gap without having the arrow end up in one of the cups to either side of it, and making sure as well that the edge of the manipulandum was Xush with the two cups bounding the target gap. Given these requirements, it is understandable that participants sought to bring their hands to Wnal postures that were at or near the middle of the range of motion since that part of the joint range permitted greatest Xexibility. (In this connection, Rosenbaum et al. 1996, showed that oscillations were faster near the middle of the range of motion of the pronation–supination axis than near the extremes.) At the same time, the data from the present study, like the data from previous studies of the end-state comfort eVect, suggest that the motor planning system is itself quite Xexible in the way it weighs initial states and end states. Such Xexible weighting is likely to be one of the capabilities that makes skillful performance possible in the everyday environment. Acknowledgments This work was supported by grant SBR-9496290 from the National Science Foundation, grants KO2MH0097701A1 and R15 NS41887-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health, and grants from the Social Science Research Institute and from the OYce of Research and Graduate Studies, College of Liberal Arts, Pennsylvania State University. We thank Rob Lehnert and Matthew Walsh for help with data collection and Mark Fischman and Howard Zelaznik for helpful comments on an earlier version of this write-up. Correspondence should be sent to Wei Zhang ([email protected]) or David A. Rosenbaum ([email protected]), who are in the Department of Kinesiology and Department of Psychology, respectively, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802.

References Cohen RG, Rosenbaum DA (2004) Where objects are grasped reveals how grasps are planned: generation and recall of motor plans. Exp Brain Res 157:486–495 Fischman MG, Stodden DF, Lehman DM (2003) The end-state comfort eVect in bimanual grip selection. Res Q Exerc Sport 74:17–24 Fischman MG (1998) Minimizing awkwardness in grip-selection. Percept Mot Skills 86:328–330

Exp Brain Res (2008) 184:383–389 Kelso JAS (1984) Phase transitions and critical behavior in human bimanual coordination. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp 246:R1000–R1004 Kornblum S (1965) Response competition and/or inhibition in two choice reaction time. Psychon Sci 2:55–56 Rosenbaum DA (1980) Human movement initiation: speciWcation of arm, direction, and extent. J Exp Psychol Gen 109:444–474 Rosenbaum DA, Cohen RG, Meulenbroek RG, Vaughan J (2006) Plans for grasping objects. In: Latash M, Lestienne F (eds) Motor control and learning over the lifespan. Springer, Berlin, pp 9–25 Rosenbaum DA, Halloran E, Cohen RG (2006) Grasping movement plans. Psychon Bull Rev 13:918–922 Rosenbaum DA, InhoV AW, Gordon AM (1984) Choosing between movement sequences: a hierarchical editor model. J Exp Psychol Gen 113:372–393 Rosenbaum DA, van Heugten CM, Caldwell GE (1996) From cognition to biomechanics and back: the end-state comfort eVect and the middle-is-faster eVect. Acta Psychol 94:59–85 Rosenbaum DA, Jorgensen MJ (1992) Planning macroscopic aspects of manual control. Hum Mov Sci 11:61–69

389 Rosenbaum DA, Marchak F, Barnes HJ, Vaughan J, Slotta J, Jorgensen M (1990) Constraints for action selection: overhand versus underhand grips. In: Jeannerod M (ed) Attention and performance XIII. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, pp 321–342 Rosenbaum DA, Vaughan J, Barnes HJ, Stewart E (1993) Plans for object manipulation. In: Meyer DE, Kornblum S (eds) Attention and performance XIV_ A silver jubilee: synergies in experimental psychology, artiWcial intelligence and cognitive neuroscience. MIT, Bradford Books, Cambridge, pp 803–820 Rossetti Y, Meckler C, Prablanc C (1994) Is there an optimal arm posture? Deterioration of Wnger localization precision and comfort sensation in extreme arm-joint postures. Exp Brain Res 99:131– 136 Short MW, Cauraugh JH (1997) Planning macroscopic aspects of manual control: end-state comfort eVect and point-of-change eVects. Acta Psychol 96:133–147 Weigelt M, Cohen RG, Rosenbaum DA (2007) Returning home: locations rather than movements are recalled in human object manipulation. Exp Brain Res 149:191–198

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Apr 14, 2011 - Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011. Abstract Graph .... tion as an integer quadratic program (Leordeanu and Hebert. 2006; Cour and Shi ... computer vision applications such as: discovering texture regularity (Hays et al. .... fo

Candidate quality - Springer Link
didate quality when the campaigning costs are sufficiently high. Keywords Politicians' competence . Career concerns . Campaigning costs . Rewards for elected ...

Mathematical Biology - Springer Link
Here φ is the general form of free energy density. ... surfaces. γ is the edge energy density on the boundary. ..... According to the conventional Green theorem.

Artificial Emotions - Springer Link
Department of Computer Engineering and Industrial Automation. School of ... researchers in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is believed that ...

Property Specifications for Workflow Modelling - Springer Link
workflow systems precisely, and permit the application of model checking to auto- ... diate interactions between the traveller who wants to buy airline tickets and the ... also a specification language, and to the best of our knowledge there is ...