ABSTRACT

Reaching for objects in our surroundings is an everyday activity that most humans perform seamlessly a hundred times a day. It is nonetheless a complex behavior that requires the perception of objects’ features, action selection, movement planning, multi-joint coordination, force regulation, and the integration of all of these properties during the actions themselves to meet the successful demands of extremely varied task goals. Even though reach-to-grasp behavior has been studied for decades, it has, in recent years, become a particularly growing area of multidisciplinary research because of its crucial role in activities of daily living and broad range of applications to other fields, including physical rehabilitation, prosthetics, and robotics.

This volume brings together novel and exciting research that sheds light into the complex sensory-motor processes involved in the selection and production of reach-to-grasp behaviors. It also offers a unique life-span and multidisciplinary perspective on the development and multiple processes involved in the formation of reach-to-grasp. It covers recent and exciting discoveries from the fields of developmental psychology and learning sciences, neurophysiology and brain sciences, movement sciences, and the dynamic field of developmental robotics, which has become a very active applied field relying on biologically inspired models. This volume is a rich and valuable resource for students and professionals in all of these research fields, as well as cognitive sciences, rehabilitation, and other applied sciences.

part I|2 pages

Developmental Studies on the Origins and Acquisition of Reach-to-Grasp

part II|2 pages

Neurophysiological Bases of Reaching, Grasping, and Action Selection

part III|2 pages

On the Planning and Control of Reach-to-Grasp Behavior in Adults

chapter 9|27 pages

Reach-to-Grasp Movements

Testing the Cognitive Architecture of Action

chapter 11|23 pages

Dexterous Manipulation

Bridging the Gap between Hand Kinematics and Kinetics

part IV|2 pages

Reach-to-Grasp in Developmental Robotics

chapter 12|38 pages

Reaching for Objects

A Neural Process Account in a Developmental Perspective

chapter 13|30 pages

The Development of Reaching and Grasping

Towards an Integrated Framework Based on a Critical Review of Computational and Robotic Models

chapter 14|18 pages

Reaching and Grasping

What We Can Learn from Psychology and Robotics