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

Abstract

Perceiving a visual stimulus is hampered when the stimulus is compatible with simultaneously prepared or executed action (blindness effect). We explored the roles of the effector identity of the responding hand and of orthogonal compatibility (above-right/below-left correspondence) in the blindness effect. In Experiment 1, participants conducted bimanual key presses with vertically arranged responses while perceiving a brief presentation of rightward or leftward arrowheads. A blindness effect based on the effector identity did emerge, but only with the above-right/below-left key-hand arrangement. An orthogonal blindness effect was not found in Experiment 2 with a horizontal key-press action task and a vertical arrowhead perception task. We concluded that the anatomical identity of the responding hand was not integrated into the action plan with an orthogonally incompatible key-hand arrangement. The findings are discussed in terms of the generality and limits of the blindness effect, and hierarchical response coding.

Investigating Ideomotor Cognition with Motorvisual Priming Paradigms: Key Findings, Methodological Challenges, and Future Directions

“…Based on the prolonged time course of motorvisual interference, Wühr and Müsseler (2001) have concluded that motorvisual impairment is caused by the binding of perceptual event representations in compound representations of the action plan. This view has now become common sense in motorvisual interference research (Hommel, 2004; Nishimura and Yokosawa, 2010a; Thomaschke et al, 2012b). …”

“…In the majority of motorvisual interference studies, this condition is, however, not met. Usually R1 is executed at leisure after S1, and S2 perception is measured shortly before, shortly after, or during execution of R1 (e.g., Müsseler et al, 2000, 2001; Eder and Klauer, 2007; Nishimura and Yokosawa, 2010a). Under such a scenario, R1 features can be assumed to be long activated and bound when participants initiate the movement and S2 is presented.…”

Pointing Hand Stimuli Induce Spatial Compatibility Effects and Effector Priming

“…The lower-ranked internal coding of anatomical identity is influential only when a higher-ranked external positional coding could not be used. Evidence for hierarchical action coding is reported in a wide range of interactions between spatial/spatially-associated stimulus features and manual responses (Klapp et al, 1979; Müller and Schwarz, 2007; Nishimura and Yokosawa, 2010b). …”

Unconscious Effects of Action on Perception

“…Müsseler and Hommel first described an apparent blindness to response-compatible visual stimuli, calling it action-affected blindness [47]. This effect later was replicated by several studies, all using a very similar method [48,49,50,51,52]. Participants plan left or right keypresses, but, just before they execute the action, an arrow is presented very briefly and they must report whether the arrow is pointing left or right.…”

“…When motor plans and the perceived stimulus overlap, experiments often report action-blindness effects [47,48,49,50,51,52]; that is, the relative blindness or missed perception of a stimulus that is congruent with the action-plan. Under limited resources, the system should filter out unnecessary information and focus on detecting stimuli that do not match predictions and therefore may require modification of actions.…”