Moving Wet Objects with Wrinkled Fingers

Description

Results from an experiment to move wet/dry objects with wrinkled/dry fingers

Format

A data frame with 80 observations on the following 7 variables.

Participant

Participant ID (p1 to p20)

Time

Time to move objects (seconds)

Condition

non-wrinkled/dry, non-wrinkled/wet, wrinkled/dry, or wrinkled/wet

Fingers

Status of fingers (non or wrinkled)

Objects

Status of objects (dry or wet)

WrinkledThenNon

Wrinkled first? (1=yes or 1=no)

DryThenWet

Dry first? (1=yes or 1=no)

Details

Each of 20 participants were measured doing a "transfer task" several times under each of four conditions. The transfer task was to pick up an item with the right hand thumb and index finger, pass the item through a small hole and grab it with the left hand, and then put the item into a box that had a hole in the lid. Sometimes the participant's fingers were wrinkled; sometimes the items were sitting in water.

Source

Kareklas, Nettle, and Smulders (2013) "Water-induced finger wrinkles improve handling of wet objects", Biology Letters, http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2012.0999