Abstract
Proximal hand posture biases activity in the magnocellular (M) visual pathway (Gozli et al., 2012; Goodhew et al., in press). We tested whether this is due to having visual stimuli in the "action space" of the hands by making use of the finding that low spatial frequency images are rapidly identified through "gist" processing arising from the M-pathway (Kveraga, 2007). In Experiment 1, we paired low and high spatial frequencies images with either a proximal or distal hand posture and had participants indicate whether the objects were larger or smaller than a prototypical shoebox. Participants responded faster to low spatial frequency images paired with a proximal hand posture. No differences were found with distal hand posture. In Experiment 2, we manipulated proximal hand postures such that hands were either action oriented with palms in (palms toward the stimuli) or non-action oriented with palms out (palms away from the stimuli). In Experiment 3 we used one proximal hand posture (palms in) only but manipulated the type of visual stimuli such that they were either action oriented (easily grasped) or non-action oriented (not easily grasped). The results of Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that when action was primed (whether through hand posture or stimulus type) there was an advantage for low spatial frequency images. Overall, these experiments show that rapid "gist" object perception is due to M pathway activity, and that this processing is influenced by action-based hand positions.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013