Abstract
In this ERP study a dot probe paradigm was used to provide physiological evidence for the parallel selection of multiple movement goals. Participants executed a sequence of manual pointing movements to two out of three possible goal positions. During movement preparation, a task-irrelevant visual transient (dot probe) was flashed either at one of the movement goals or at the third position that was movement-irrelevant in the current trial. The data reveal that the N1-component induced by the dot probe is enhanced if the dot is flashed at any of the movement goals, indicating that both target positions are attended well before the initialization of the movement sequence. Therefore, the preparation of a double reach to both goals leads to enhanced sensory processing of visual stimuli at both target locations. Additional behavioral studies using a secondary letter discrimination task show that this selection-for-action of multiple goal locations occurs in parallel and leads to a splitting of visual attention into spatially distinct foci. Comparison with the preparation of double-saccade sequences shows that the observed pre-movement facilitations at multiple goal positions occur independent of the effector system used.