Journal Article

Vision-for-action: The effects of object property discrimination and action state on affordance compatibility effects

Tipper, Steven P., Hayes, Amy E., Paul, Matthew A.

2006

Overview

When a person views an object, the action the object evokes appears to be activated independently of the person's intention to act. We demonstrate two further properties of this vision-to-action process. First, it is not completely automatic, but is determined by the stimulus properties of the object that are attended. Thus, when a person discriminates the shape of an object, action affordance effects are observed; but when a person discriminates an object's color, no affordance effects are observed. The former, shape property is associated with action, such as how an object might be grasped; the latter, color property is irrelevant to action. Second, we also show that the action state of an object influences evoked action. Thus, active objects, with which current action is implied, produce larger affordance effects than passive objects, with which no action is implied. We suggest that the active object activates action simulation processes similar to those proposed in mirror systems.

• Publisher: Psychonomic Society,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Activity levels. Psychomotricity / Adult / Automatism / Biological and medical sciences / Color Perception / Discrimination (Psychology) / Experimental psychology / Female / Form Perception / Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology / Human factors research / Humans / Male / Motion Perception / Perception / Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry / Psychology. Psychophysiology / Psychomotor activities / Psychomotor Performance / Reaction Time / Vision / Visual Perception / Visual task performance