Abstract
Perception and action interact in nearly every moment of daily life. Research demonstrates that performing an action toward an object can impact perceptual processing. For example, changes in orientation are detected more efficiently when relevant actions (i.e., grasps) are directed toward the target. Furthermore, it has been also shown that ease of action can enhance liking of a target stimulus; how ease of action influences visual perception, however, is lesser known. To address this question, right-handed participants were instructed to perform a grasp toward a Gabor patch, while simultaneously performing an orientation change detection task. On a given trial, the Gabor patch appeared on either the left or right side of the screen and was oriented to be ± 45° from vertical. In addition, the Gabor patch could slightly change its orientation during action preparation. Because all subjects were right-handed, ease of grasping was easier and fluent towards the right-tilted object (+45 °). As a control, participants also performed the same orientation change detection task with pointing or perception. These served as a baseline for when an action is performed with no relevance to orientation (pointing) or when no action is performed. We found that participants performed best on the orientation discrimination task when grasping movements were prepared for right-tilted targets (+45 °). Therefore, we suggest that ease of action enhances perceptual sensitivity, but this is only the case when action features are relevant.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016