Using Chopsticks To Change People’s Information Utilization Strategy

Chopsticks with a long history is a kind of special dishes which reflecting the differences between Chinese and Western culture. Study on the tool, some results of the report suggests that tool-use induces plastic changes resulting in the tool being incorporated in the body schema, and it is an extension of the body. Foreign researchers are interesting in the field which is focused on familiar tools like knife, fork, spoon and pliers, and there is a few research on chopsticks of behavior.Thus, our study is a complement of tools experimental areas. In addition, there is a great deal of research focused on the behavior of hand grip, but there is rarely research studied in feeding. From people’s daily life experience, vision is a main source of information and visual information channel is generally considered dominant channel, in the filed of hand grip on action, a large number of researchers support the dominant of visual information which is widely accepted. But it is more likely to be ignored in reality that is caused by the familiarity with the tool, just like we often watch television while we are eating without paying attention to chopsticks. Thus whether tool-use strategy will be changed by the familiarity, it is worth being studied.This study involved three experiments.In Experiments 1, the researcher studied the superiority information channels and aimed to find whether the use of familiarity with chopsticks alters the body schema such as an extension of finger in Chinese, and whether the tool-use employs the same information using policies in behavior performance. Chinese participants used chopsticks, hand, clip respectively in open and closed loop, and record the maximum open aperture of the mouth. Results showed that:(1) Opening and closing of the hand loop is not significant, opening and closing of chopsticks is not significant, it is explain that tool-use hands and chopsticks use the same access to information policy, mainly using tactile information. (2) In the condition of open-loop only visual information can be used, the aperture of mouth achieve minimum when use hand, followed by using chopsticks, the aperture of mouth achieve maximum when use clip.Experiment 2 aims to detect the role of visual information in the feeding action. As a result of experiments, there are two scenarios separately which is tactile and visual with tactile, so we do not know exactly what the role visual information played in the feeding action. Experiment 2 asked participants move their head to get the food in front of them which is clipped by different tool under the condition of open and closed loop, record the maximum open aperture of the mouth. Results showed that:(1) there is a significance effects between the open and closed loop, under closed-loop conditions, maximum open mouth is bigger than which under open-loop conditions. (2) There is no significant effects between the varieties of tools, no matter whether in the open or closed loop.In experiment 3, which proved that though the feeding action use the same information with tactile information from chopsticks provided, but there is a significant difference between Chinese and foregin participants that is the familiarity on how to use chopsticks, whether the difference will lead difference policy differences to foreigners. Participants are foreign students, procedure is the same with Experiment 1. Results showed that:(1) there is no significance effects in using hand under the open or closed loop, mainly using tactile information. There is significance effects in using chopsticks, mainly using the visual information. (2)In open loop, only the tactile information can be used under the condition that the maximum opening aperture of the hand is the smallest. When using the clip, the maximum opening of the mouth with the chopsticks is the largest.This research mainly summarizes a conclusion:Chinese skilled use of chopsticks and fed by hand are the same at feeding movement information utilization. In feeding movement, hand tactile information predominante the use of information; Familiar with tool degree can change the information utilization strategy.