Sensorimotor faculties bias perceptual decision-making.

Decision-making is a deliberate process that seemingly evolves under our own volition. Yet, research on embodied cognition has demonstrated that higher-order cognitive processes may be influenced, in unexpected ways, by properties of motor and sensory systems. Here we tested whether and how simple decisions are influenced by handedness and by asymmetries in the auditory system.

Visual Distraction's "Silver Lining": Distractor Suppression Boosts Attention to Competing Stimuli.

Efficient search of the environment requires that people attend to the desired elements in a scene and ignore the undesired ones. Recent research has shown that this endeavor can benefit from the ability to proactively suppress distractors with known features, but little is known about the mechanisms that produce the suppression. We show here in five experiments ( = 120 college students) that, surprisingly, identification of a sought-for target is enhanced when it is grouped with a suppressed distractor compared with when it is in a different perceptual group.

Feature-blind attentional suppression of salient distractors.

A recent paper has reported, for the first time, that people are capable of suppressing salient singleton distractors of unknown color if the search task requires them to search for the most prevalent of several shapes in the display. We identify here several potential limitations of the earlier findings. In particular, in the reported experiments, the likelihood of a salient distractor was higher than what is typically studied, the distractor object was similar in shape to the relevant objects, only two colors were studied, the distractor was consistently a fixed shape, and the distractor was always a unique shape different from the search targets.

Ignoring the unknown: Attentional suppression of unpredictable visual distraction.

Recent findings have shown that people are capable of proactively inhibiting salient visual distractors in a scene when they know the color of the distractor, enhancing efficient search. Investigations of this have concluded that it is not possible to suppress a distractor of an unknown color, implying a mechanism that operates only on a first-order, feature-specific level. However, with a modification to the search task, we show here for the first time that people can indeed suppress salient uniquely colored distractors even when not knowing their color in advance.

Spatial task relevance modulates value-driven attentional capture.

Attention tends to be attracted to visual features previously associated with reward. To date, nearly all existing studies examined value-associated stimuli at or near potential target locations, making such locations meaningful to inspect. The present experiments examined whether the attentional priority of a value-associated stimulus depends on its location-wise task relevance.

Contributions of gains and losses to attentional capture and disengagement: evidence from the gap paradigm.

It is known that movements of visual attention are influenced by features in a scene, such as colors, that are associated with value or with loss. The present study examined the detailed nature of these attentional effects by employing the gap paradigm-a technique that has been used to separately reveal changes in attentional capture and shifting, and changes in attentional disengagement. In four experiments, participants either looked toward or away from stimuli with colors that had been associated either with gains or with losses.

Simple action alters attention towards visual features.

Recent studies have revealed an action effect, in which a simple action towards a prime stimulus biases attention in a subsequent visual search in favor of objects that match the prime. However, to date the majority of research on the phenomenon has studied search elements that are exact matches to the prime, and that vary only on the dimension of color, making it unclear how general the phenomenon is. Here, across a series of experiments, we show that action can also prioritize objects that match the shape of the prime.

Ensemble perception without attention depends upon attentional control settings.

People are able to rapidly extract summary statistical information about common patterns, or ensembles, that may exist in a scene, such as repeated textures or colors. Here we examined the extent to which such an ensemble perception can occur in the absence of focal visual attention using a method that has some advantages over methods previously used to study the issue. In particular, we assessed the extent to which ensembles can be processed without attention by measuring the indirect effect of a to-be-ignored ensemble on judgments of an attended ensemble.

Approach and avoidance movements modulate value-driven attentional capture.

Recent studies have shown that visual features that were previously associated with a high monetary reward attract visual attention, a finding referred to as . Given the fact that a reward often follows an action, the present study examined how approach and avoidance movements made to achieve a reward might modulate value-driven attentional capture. Experiment 1 revealed that a color that was previously associated with a high reward was more likely to capture visual attention than a color that was previously associated with a low reward, but only when the reward had been achieved by an approaching movement.

Standing enhances cognitive control and alters visual search.

Postural changes and the maintenance of postural stability have been shown to affect many aspects of cognition. Here we examined the extent to which selective visual attention may differ between standing and seated postures in three tasks: the Stroop color-word task, a task-switching paradigm, and visual search. We found reduced Stroop interference, a reduction in switch costs, and slower search rates in the visual search task when participants stood compared to when they sat while performing the tasks.

Motion onset really does capture attention.

Several properties of visual stimuli have been shown to capture attention, one of which is the onset of motion. However, whether motion onset truly captures attention has been debated. It has been argued that motion onset only captured attention in previous studies because properties of the animated motion used in those experiments caused it to be "jerky" (i.

Effects of environmental support on overt and covert visuospatial rehearsal.

People can rehearse to-be-remembered locations either overtly, using eye movements, or covertly, using only shifts of spatial attention. The present study examined whether the effectiveness of these two strategies depends on environmental support for rehearsal. In Experiment 1, when environmental support (i.

Action influences unconscious visual processing.

It has long been known that action is tightly linked to visual perception. In support of this connection, recent studies have shown that making a simple action towards a visual object can bias subsequent visual processing of features of the acted-on object. The present study examined whether conscious awareness of the acted-on object is necessary to yield this action effect.

Simple actions activate semantic associations.

It is well known that words can prime the identification of related pictures. But how are these connections between words and their visual representations prioritized? Here we show that action modulates word-picture priming. Participants in three experiments either did nothing or made a simple, arbitrary action (a keypress) while reading a word.

Tool use produces a size illusion revealing action-specific perceptual mechanisms.

In four experiments, participants estimated the sizes of target objects that were either out of reach, or that could be reached by a tool (a stylus or laser pointer). Objects reachable with the aid of a tool were perceived to be smaller than identical objects without a tool. Participants' responses to questioning rule out demand characteristics as an explanation.

Emotional processing is enhanced in peri-hand space.

The space near the hands, or peri-hand space is a critical multisensory-motor interface between people and the environment. Recent studies have shown that visual processing near the hands is altered compared with stimuli far from the hands. Some results suggest that the changes may be mediated by brain mechanisms involved in evaluating emotional stimuli.

Influence of simple action on subsequent manual and ocular responses.

Recent investigations into how action affects perception have revealed an interesting "action effect"-that is, simply acting upon an object enhances its processing in subsequent tasks. The previous studies, however, relied only on manual responses, allowing an alternative stimulus-response binding account of the effect. The current study examined whether the action effect occurs in the presence of changes in response modalities.

Reduced object-based perception in the near-hand space.

Previous studies have shown that hand proximity changes visual perception (Abrams et al. in Cognition 107(3):1035-1047, 2008). The present study examined the effects of hand proximity on object-based perception.

Spatial representations in older adults are not modified by action: Evidence from tool use.

Theories of embodied perception hold that the visual system is calibrated by both the body schema and the action system, allowing for adaptive action-perception responses. One example of embodied perception involves the effects of tool use on distance perception, in which wielding a tool with the intention to act upon a target appears to bring that object closer. This tool-based spatial compression (i.

How far away is that? It depends on you: Perception accounts for the abilities of others.

Perception is believed to scale the world to reflect one's own capabilities for action-objects that are more effortful to obtain are perceived as further away. Somewhat surprisingly, perception is also influenced by observing another person attempt an action, even though others cannot directly alter one's own capabilities. It is unknown, however, whether the effects of observation reflect a simulation of one acting as if from the perspective of the actor, or whether they reflect simulation of the potential effects of the actor on the environment, but from the observer's own point of view.

Reward and punishment act as distinct factors in guiding behavior.

Behavior rests on the experience of reinforcement and punishment. It has been unclear whether reinforcement and punishment act as oppositely valenced components of a single behavioral factor, or whether these two kinds of outcomes play fundamentally distinct behavioral roles. To this end, we varied the magnitude of a reward or a penalty experienced following a choice using monetary tokens.

Limits on action priming by pictures of objects.

When does looking at an object prime actions associated with using it, and what aspects of those actions are primed? We examined whether viewing manmade objects with handles would selectively facilitate responses for the hand closest to the handle, attempting to replicate a study reported by Tucker and Ellis (1998). We also examined whether the hypothesized action priming effects depended upon the response hand's proximity to an object. In 7 experiments, participants made judgments about whether pictured objects were manmade or natural or whether the objects were upright or inverted.

Decomposing the action effect: how simple actions affect subsequent perception.

Simple actions toward an object cause people to allocate attention preferentially toward properties of that object in subsequent unrelated tasks. We show here that it is not necessary to process or attend to any properties of the object in order to obtain the effect: Even when participants knew prior to the object's onset that they would be acting, the effects of the object remained. Furthermore, the effect remained when the action had no visible effect on the object.

Hold the future, let the past go: attention prefers the features of future targets.

Previous studies have shown that attention can be captured by task-irrelevant distractors under the guidance of attentional control settings. However, it is unknown whether people can establish an attentional control setting (ACS) for a sequence of distinct events. The present study tested that question by asking observers to expect a sequence of two colored targets in a specific order.