On the relations between seen objects and components of potential actions.

M Tucker, R Ellis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention to act. This article describes three experiments that challenged this view through the use of a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm with photographs of common graspable objects as stimuli. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether each object was upright or inverted. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of the irrelevant dimension of left-right object orientation on bimanual and unimanual keypress responses. Experiment 3 examined wrist rotation responses to objects requiring either clockwise or anticlockwise wrist rotations when grasped. The results (a) are consistent with the view that seen objects automatically potentiate components of the actions they afford, (b) show that compatibility effects of an irrelevant stimulus dimension can be obtained across a wide variety of naturally occurring stimuli, and (c) support the view that intentions to act operate on already existing motor representations of the possible actions in a visual scene.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)830-846
Number of pages0
JournalJ Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform
Volume24
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 1998

Keywords

  • Attention
  • Humans
  • Mental Processes
  • Psychomotor Performance
  • Reaction Time
  • Visual Perception

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