How people process information

Research has shown that using a grabbing action with our hands can help our processing of visual information. The results could have potential implications for those with learning disabilities.

‘The research is still at an early stage’, Ed Symes from Plymouth University said. ‘But our next step is to see how these results might inform ways of helping children with severe learning difficulties.’

The discovery was made in an experiment on what is known as ‘change blindness’. Researchers use the problem of seeing changes in almost identical pictures to see if preparing to act can help us to spot these changes.

Symes, a lecturer in psychology, asked his participants to look at pictures of both large and small fruits. When the participants detected which fruit had changed, the participants had to grasp one of two devices. The key to this was that one device was similar in size to the small fruit and the other was similar in size to the big fruit.

The study found that if people were asked to look at two pictures of fruit alternating on a computer screen, they noticed which fruit was different quicker if they were going to grasp an object similar in size to the fruit. Symes found that the ‘intention’ to grasp something helps with the processing of visual information.

Symes explains this might help to improve the communication skills of children with complex physical and mental special needs. The first problem in assisting such children is assessing what they understand about the world, when they have no reliable means of communicating. They may not be able to speak and may have limited physical capabilities.

The new findings will help test different ways of establishing communication. For example, a child who wants a particular toy but is unable to point may be able to make other physical movements such as grasping. Preparing the action of grasping may help the child process information about the toy easier and it may help them communicate this information better. Symes hopes that pairing actions such as grasps with objects could generally help the child to signal their responses more easily.

He adds: ‘Understanding the world around them is a major problem for these children. We are now investigating whether this kind of aligning of stimuli and responses might be one way to making information processing more fluent for these children.’

ENDS