Action for perception: a motor-visual attentional effect

Five experiments investigated whether preparation of a grasping movement affects detection and discrimination of visual stimuli. Normal human participants were required to prepare to grasp a bar and then to grasp it as fast as possible on presentation of a visual stimulus. On the basis of the degree of sharing of their intrinsic properties with those of the to-be-grasped bar, visual stimuli were categorized as "congruent" or "incongruent." Results showed that grasping reaction times to congruent visual stimuli were faster than reaction times to incongruent ones. These data indicate that preparation to act on an object produces faster processing of stimuli congruent with that object. The same facilitation was present also when, after the preparation of hand grasping, participants were suddenly instructed to inhibit the prepared grasping movement and to respond with a different motor effector. The authors suggest that these findings could represent an extension of the premotor theory of attention, from orienting of attention to spatial locations to orienting of attention to graspable objects.