In remote control situations, sensorial impoverishment is one of the main difficulties. One way to minimize its influence on the system's performance is helping the human operator to perceive and understand the remote system's behavior. This paper is based on the concept of appropriation of an object by a user, derived from Piaget's theory of adaptation. This developmental psychologist proposed that humans adapt themselves to the external world through two complementary processes: Assimilation corresponds to the generalization of pre-existing schemes to the use of a new device or object. Accommodation corresponds to the differentiation of pre-existing schemes, which leads to the development of new schemes. This theoretical framework was tentatively applied to the remote control of a manipulator arm. Experiments were conducted on this device, in order to test whether the anthropomorphic aspects of the remote systems could help the operator to adapt to the device. The outcome of this successful adaptation process would then lead to an appropriation by the operator of the remote device characteristics.