However, schools can still try to put everything in this category of “dangerous object” collection. Because when a student cuts another student with the child`s safety scissors, throws a stone into the room, digs into someone`s side with a bunch of keys, etc., everyday things can become the basis for hanging or excluding students. If a pocket knife does not meet the legal definition of a “knife,” a school will simply circumvent the legal definition by suspending or expelling a student for possession of a dangerous object instead of a knife. A student who owns something that is clearly excluded from a section of code should not simply have that element mixed in the dangerous objects section. The student should drop the charge. Apparently not. Schools simply push the item into the “dangerous object” category and continue the eviction or suspension procedure! This completely contradicts the goal of having a legal definition of a knife in the Education Code! Fourthly, we examine the temporal course of the process and therefore the question of whether the processing of dangerous objects allows immediate reactions or whether it requires the preparation of answers, also taking into account the distance from the object. In fact, keep in mind that distance and time are linked: if we can see dangerous entities from afar, we have time to prepare our responses; This is not the case when these entities are very close to us. We do not make an accurate prediction on this point, but our goal is to study the timing of the transformation of dangerous goods. Second, we focus on the effect of neutral and dangerous objects when they come to us (dynamic presentation) or when they are close to us (static presentation), when they move away from us (dynamic presentation) or when they are far from us (static presentation).
In the present study, we study whether motor reactions are influenced by observing the danger of the object in dynamic and static situations without showing a direct or potential interaction between an object and an effector. In three experiments, we focused on the conceptual distinction between neutral and dangerous objects by asking participants to perform a simple categorization task (i.e., deciding whether the stimulus shown was an artifact or a natural object) by pressing or releasing one of the two designed buttons. The size of the object was manipulated to give an indication of distance, i.e. smaller objects displaying objects farther from the participant`s body, while larger objects displayed objects closer to the participant. The presentation of the object can be dynamic (experiment 1) or static (experiments 2 and 3) because the objects moved or moved away from the participants (dynamic presentation) or the objects were close or far from the participants (static presentation). In addition, the passage of time was taken into account by examining whether the treatment of the hazard differed from that of the preparation of motor reactions (experiments 1 and 2) or the need for an immediate motor response (experiment 3). For humans, similar results have been obtained with brain activation studies (for a review, see Martin, 2007). For example, in a groundbreaking PET study, Grafton et al. (1997) recorded the automatic activation of the action observation network (i.e. the dorsal premotor cortex and the anterior intraparietal sulcus) when simply observing manipulable objects such as tools, even without an obvious motor reaction. Other fMRI studies have shown the activation of a fronto-parietal circuit (i.e. the left premotor cortex and the inferior parietal lobule) when tangible objects have been observed (Chao and Martin, 2000) and when performing a certain handle posture based on the specific posture of the handle provided by the characteristics of the object (Grèzes et al., 2003).
A particularly relevant line of research for the subject addressed in our study concerns the relationship between affordances and space. In a number of studies, Costantini and colleagues have attempted to clarify whether affordances present differently when objects, such as bottles, are inside or outside the perpersonal space of the collector, i.e. in the space that included the objects at hand (Rizzolatti et al., 1997). In a first behavioral experiment, Costantini et al. (2010) used a spatial alignment effect paradigm that required participants to reproduce a gripping motion as soon as a go signal became visible (i.e., the handle of a cup placed inside or outside the participants` reach). The study found that participants reacted to affordances only when the object was in the observer`s peripersonal space and therefore in its accessible space, and not when it was in their extrapersonal space (see also Costantini et al., 2011a, for a replication of the same effects in a task in which not only images of objects, but also verbs were used; see Coello and Bonnotte, 2013, for a study of the relationship between the spatial content of determinants and the spatial representation of possible action plans). In a subsequent behavioral study, Costantini et al. (2011b) used the previous paradigm, but introduced the presence of an avatar in half of the studies.
They extended previous results showing the presence of an affordance effect even when the object was outside the observer`s accessible space, provided it was within reach of another individual. For example, if a cup was in the room away from the participant, but was near the avatar, the affordance effect was present. These results have also been supported by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies (Cardellicchio et al., 2011, 2012). A dangerous good (also known as a dangerous good or dangerous good) is any substance or material that may pose an unreasonable risk to health, safety and property during commercial transportation. The identification of dangerous goods is the first step in reducing the risks posed by the product through proper packaging, communication, handling and stowage. So there are things that are clearly dangerous objects, such as knives, explosives, weapons, controlled substances, etc., but according to the California Education Code, these items are explicitly designated as prohibited items even at school. The collective term “dangerous objects” applies to anything a student may possess. In this work, we focus on some unanswered questions about aversive affordances by studying the dangerousness of objects without taking into account motor resonance mechanisms, and by studying whether and how observing a neutral or dangerous object in a static or dynamic situation can modulate our motor responses differently.