Contacting Points Overhead with and without a Tennis Racquet

Abstract

Wielding an object or tool has been proposed to extend automatically the body's boundary to the tip of the held object. A sample of convenience consisted of 7 women and 5 men whose mean age was 23 yr. Using recreational tennis skills they judged the location of unseen overhead points of contact, where accuracy of discrimination was measured for movements to contact made with and without use of a tennis racquet. Points-of-contact overhead touched by the hand were significantly better discriminated after a backward and upward arm swing than when contact was made after a similar swing with a tennis racquet.