Actions blind to conceptually overlapping stimuli

Abstract

Participants are worse at identifying spatial symbols (arrowheads) while performing spatially compatible manual key presses. The present experiments investigated the generality of this "blindness effect" to response-compatible stimuli. In Experiment 1 a left key press deteriorated the identification of left-pointing arrows, and a right key press deteriorated the perception of right-pointing arrows, independent of the hands used to press the key. Thus the blindness effect is based on codes of the distal response location rather than on the body-intrinsic anatomical connection of the hands. Experiment 2 extended the blindness effect to verbal responses and written position words (left, right, up, down). Vocalizing a position word blinded to directly compatible position words (e.g., left-left), but not to orthogonally compatible position words (e.g., left-down). This result suggests that the use of identical stimulus-response codes, and not the use of saliency-matching but distinct codes, suffices to produce blindness effects. Finally, Experiment 3 extended the blindness phenomenon beyond the spatial domain by demonstrating blindness between saying color words and perceiving color patches. Altogether, the experiments revealed action-induced blindness to be a phenomenon of broad empirical validity occurring whenever action and perception afford simultaneous access to the same conceptual codes.

Seeing while acting: hand movements can modulate attentional capture by motion onset

“…Our findings fit well with previous reports on the interference of action with visual perception due to feature overlap (Kunde & Wühr, 2004;Müsseler & Hommel, 1997;Müsseler et al, 2005;Schubö et al, 2001Schubö et al, , 2004Wühr & Müsseler, 2001;Zwickel et al, 2007Zwickel et al, , 2010). An important aspect of the findings of such interference, which is particularly relevant to our study, is that the overlap of action and perception does not need to be at the lower-level features, but can be a conceptual and symbolic overlap (e.g., verbalizing "left" or making a leftward hand movement reduces perceptual accuracy for a visually presented leftward arrow or the word LEFT; Kunde & Wühr, 2004).…”

“…An important aspect of the findings of such interference, which is particularly relevant to our study, is that the overlap of action and perception does not need to be at the lower-level features, but can be a conceptual and symbolic overlap (e.g., verbalizing "left" or making a leftward hand movement reduces perceptual accuracy for a visually presented leftward arrow or the word LEFT; Kunde & Wühr, 2004). This provides grounds for relying on the similarity between the vertical axis of motion on the computer screen (up vs. down) and the vertical axis of movement for the mouse (forward vs. backward).…”

“…Evidence for the common-coding account of action and perception comes from findings that show that when an action and a functionally unrelated percept coincide in time and share a common feature, the processing of the action and the processing of the percept interfere with one another (e.g., Kunde & Wühr, 2004;Müsseler & Hommel, 1997;Müsseler, Wühr, Danielmeier, & Zysset, 2005;Schubö, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001;Schubö, Prinz, & Aschersleben, 2004;Wühr & Müsseler, 2001;Zwickel, Grosjean, & Prinz, 2007. For instance, Müsseler and Hommel examined subjects' perception of briefly presented arrows pointing rightward or leftward while they were making a leftward or rightward manual response.…”

From visuo-motor interactions to imitation learning: Behavioural and brain imaging studies

“…Also, interference effects have been found in motorvisual priming (Hamilton, Wolpert, & Frith, 2004;Kunde & Wü hr, 2004;Mü sseler, 1999;Schubö , Prinz, & Aschersleben, 2004). Yet, except for Hamilton et al (2004), these studies did not use displays of human actions.…”

Effector identity and orthogonal stimulus–response compatibility in blindness to response-compatible stimuli

“…This was consistent with the high-level interpretation of the stimuli as a directional arrowhead or illuminating headlight beam. Concerning the action side, Kunde and Wühr (2004) had participants cross their arms to test the level of the codes integrated into the action plan. They obtained the blindness eVect based on the key position rather than the anatomical status of the hands.…”