Hand in motion reveals mind in motion

• Main Authors: Jonathan eFreeman, Rick eDale, Thomas eFarmer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2011-04-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: Hand; Real-time; temporal dynamics; motor; time-course
• Online Access: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00059/full

Recently, researchers have measured hand movements en route to choices on a screen to understand the dynamics of a broad range of psychological processes. We review this growing body of research and explain how manual action exposes the real-time unfolding of underlying cognitive processing. We describe how simple hand motions may be used to continuously index participants’ tentative commitments to different choice alternatives during the evolution of a behavioral response. As such, hand-tracking can provide unusually high-fidelity, real-time motor traces of the mind. These motor traces cast novel theoretical and empirical light onto a wide range of phenomena and serve as a potential bridge between far-reaching areas of psychological science—from language, to high-level cognition and learning, to social cognitive processes.