Not a matter of shape: The influence of tool characteristics on electrodermal activity in response to haptic exploration of Lower Palaeolithic tools.

Objectives: Haptics involves somatosensory perception through the skin surface and dynamic touch based on the proprioceptive response of the whole body. Handling Palaeolithic stone tools influences the arousal and attentional engagement, which can be detected and measured through electrodermal activity. Although tool shape has generally been studied to consider tool functions or tool making, it is also a major factor in tool sensing and haptic perception.

Hand morphometrics, electrodermal activity, and stone tools haptic perception.

Objectives: Tool use requires integration among sensorial, biomechanical, and cognitive factors. Taking into account the importance of tool use in human evolution, changes associated with the genus Homo are to be expected in all these three aspects. Haptics is based on both tactile and proprioceptive feedbacks, and it is associated with emotional reactions.

Electrodermal activity during Lower Paleolithic stone tool handling.

Objectives: Hand coordination is a key feature in primate evolution at both behavioral and cognitive levels. Humans further improved their manual abilities, and their cognitive niche is deeply associated with hand-tool relationships and technological capacity. A main cognitive change is thought to be related to the transition from Oldowan to Acheulean stone tool technology around 1.

Visuospatial Integration and Hand-Tool Interaction in Cognitive Archaeology.

Testing cognitive hypotheses in extinct species can be challenging, but it can be done through the integration of independent sources of information (e.g., anatomy, archaeology, neurobiology, psychology), and validated with quantitative and experimental approaches.

Cognitive archeology, body cognition, and hand-tool interaction.

Body cognition and lateralization can be investigated in fossils by integrating anatomical and functional aspects. Paleoneurology cannot provide strong evidence in this sense, because hemispheric asymmetries are shared in all extinct human species, and motor cortical areas are difficult to delineate in endocranial casts. However, paleoneurological analyses also suggest that modern humans and Neanderthals underwent an expansion of parietal regions crucial for visuospatial integration and eye-hand-tool management.