Abstract
There is now compelling evidence that vision exists to serve action, such that when objects are observed, corresponding motor actions are prepared for interaction with these objects irrespective of the intentions of the observer. Two properties of an object have been shown to affect automatic motor encoding. The first is the spatial location of the object relative to the responding hand. For example, Simon (1969) has shown that a key-press response to identify a stimulus is faster if it is on the same side of space as the responding hand. The second aspect of an object that appears to automatically drive action is the grasping action it affords. For example, if a graspable object such as a frying pan is observed in an orientation that is congruent with the responding hand, then facilitation of reaction time to this object is observed (e.g. Tucker & Ellis, 1988). However, it is still not clear what the relationship is between these spatial and grasp affordances: it is possible that grasp effects are actually determined by the spatial properties of the object. Therefore we report a series of experiments that investigate whether grasp affordance effects can be observed independent of the spatial properties of an object.
This research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), UK