Objective: This study aimed to examine the utility of using color and shape to differentiate drug... more Objective: This study aimed to examine the utility of using color and shape to differentiate drug strength information on over-the-counter medicine packages. Medication errors are an important threat to patient safety, and confusions between drug strengths are a significant source of medication error.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 2008
A series of experiments provide converging support for the hypothesis that action preparation bia... more A series of experiments provide converging support for the hypothesis that action preparation biases selective attention to action-congruent object features. When visual transients are masked in so-called "change blindness" scenes, viewers are blind to substantial changes between two otherwise identical pictures that flick back and forth. We report data in which participants planned a grasp prior to the onset of a change blindness scene in which one of twelve objects changed identity. Changeblindness was substantially reduced for grasp-congruent objects (e.g. planning a whole hand grasp reduced change blindness to a changing apple). A series of followup experiments ruled out an alternative explanation that this reduction had resulted from a labelling or strategising of responses, and provided converging support that the effect genuinely arose from grasp planning.
Three experiments investigated how visual objects prime the actions they afford. The principal co... more Three experiments investigated how visual objects prime the actions they afford. The principal concern was whether such visuomotor priming depends upon a concurrent visual input-as would be expected if it is mediated by on-line dorsal system processes. Experiment 1 showed there to be essentially identical advantages for making afforded over non-afforded responses when these were made to objects still in view and following brief (30 or 50 ms) object exposures that were backward masked. Experiment 2 showed that affordance effects were also unaffected by stimulus degradation. Finally, Experiment 3 showed there to be statistically equal effects from images of objects and their names. The results suggest that an active object representation is sufficient to generate affordance compatibility effects based on associated actions, whether or not the object is concurrently visible.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1998
Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention... more Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention to act. This article describes three experiments that challenged this view through the use of a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm with photographs of common graspable objects as stimuli. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether each object was upright or inverted. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of the irrelevant dimension of left-right object orientation on bimanual and unimanual keypress responses. Experiment 3 examined wrist rotation responses to objects requiring either clockwise or anticlockwise wrist rotations when grasped. The results (a) are consistent with the view that seen objects automatically potentiate components of the actions they afford, (b) show that compatibility effects of an irrelevant stimulus dimension can be obtained across a wide variety of naturally occurring stimuli, and (c) support the view that intentions to act operate on already existing motor representations of the possible actions in a visual scene.
Five experiments systematically investigated whether orientation is a visual object property that... more Five experiments systematically investigated whether orientation is a visual object property that aVords action. The primary aim was to establish the existence of a pure physical aVordance (PPA) of object orientation, independent of any semantic object-action associations or visually salient areas towards which visual attention might be biased. Taken together, the data from these experiments suggest that Wrstly PPAs of object orientation do exist, and secondly, the behavioural eVects that reveal them are larger and more robust when the object appears to be graspable, and is oriented in depth (rather than just frontally) such that its leading edge appears to point outwards in space towards a particular hand of the viewer.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 2007
Four experiments are described in which 1 visual object (the target) was selected from another (t... more Four experiments are described in which 1 visual object (the target) was selected from another (the distractor) according to its color (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or its relative location (Experiment 3) and then was classified according to a simple geometric property. Object classification was signaled as fast as possible by a precision or power grip response, and this grip was either compatible or incompatible with either object. When targets were selected by color, target-compatible grip responses were facilitated, but distractor-compatible grip responses were impaired. When targets were selected by location, similar results were obtained for target-compatible grip responses, but not distractor-compatible grip responses. These data are explained in terms of the involvement of action codes in object-level selection.
Previous research has shown that the task irrelevant size of familiar objects facilitates compati... more Previous research has shown that the task irrelevant size of familiar objects facilitates compatible precision and power grip responses. The present study examined whether the task irrelevant size of novel objects produces the same compatibility effect. However, the main objective of the study was to investigate whether visually primed precision and power grips are manually asymmetric. Experiment 1 showed that the size of a novel prime object does facilitate compatible precision and power grips, even when both the object itself and the grasp type are irrelevant to the current task. However, this effect was only found when the precision grip was made with the right hand (RH) and the power grip was made with the left hand (LH). When these grips were made with the opposite hands, the effect was absent. Experiment 2 replicated the LH bias for large objects and the RH bias for small objects when power and precision grip responses were replaced with simple LH and RH button-press responses. It appears that the two hemispheres are specialised with regard to precision and power compatible objects.
It is suggested that seen objects potentiate a range of actions associated with them, irrespectiv... more It is suggested that seen objects potentiate a range of actions associated with them, irrespective of the intentions of the viewer. Evidence for this possibility is provided by the data from two experiments, both of which required a participant to make a binary motor response to an auditory stimulus. In the ®rst experiment the response was a power or precision grip, which was performed whilst simultaneously viewing a real object which would normally be grasped using either a power or precision grip. A signi®cant interaction of response and grip compatibility of the object was observed. Similar results were obtained in the second experiment when a wrist rotation of a given direction was used as a response, whilst viewing objects which would require wrist rotations if they were to be grasped.
In what we term the orientation effect, faster spatial responses are made to the corresponding ta... more In what we term the orientation effect, faster spatial responses are made to the corresponding task irrelevant orientation of an object. We ask how this effect relates to object affordances, how attention may be involved, and how the effect relates to the better understood Simon effect. Two separate stimulus±response compatibility effects (an orientation effect and a Simon effect) were observed when spatial responses were made to photographs of objects whose orientation and location had been simultaneously manipulated. When attentional demands were high these separate effects were found using hand responses and foot responses, suggesting an abstract rather than specific coding of object affordances. However, when attentional demands were low only the Simon effect was observed, suggesting that, in order to obtain the orientation effect, objects must be represented at the level of an object.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1998
Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention... more Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention to act. This article describes three experiments that challenged this view through the use of a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm with photographs of common graspable objects as stimuli. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether each object was upright or inverted. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of the irrelevant dimension of left-right object orientation on bimanual and unimanual keypress responses. Experiment 3 examined wrist rotation responses to objects requiring either clockwise or anticlockwise wrist rotations when grasped. The results (a) are consistent with the view that seen objects automatically potentiate components of the actions they afford, (b) show that compatibility effects of an irrelevant stimulus dimension can be obtained across a wide variety of naturally occurring stimuli, and (c) support the view that intentions to act operate on already existing motor representations of the possible actions in a visual scene.
Three experiments investigated how visual objects prime the actions they afford. The principal co... more Three experiments investigated how visual objects prime the actions they afford. The principal concern was whether such visuomotor priming depends upon a concurrent visual input-as would be expected if it is mediated by on-line dorsal system processes. Experiment 1 showed there to be essentially identical advantages for making afforded over non-afforded responses when these were made to objects still in view and following brief (30 or 50 ms) object exposures that were backward masked. Experiment 2 showed that affordance effects were also unaffected by stimulus degradation. Finally, Experiment 3 showed there to be statistically equal effects from images of objects and their names. The results suggest that an active object representation is sufficient to generate affordance compatibility effects based on associated actions, whether or not the object is concurrently visible.
Recent evidence suggests that viewing a static prime object (a hand grasp), can activate action r... more Recent evidence suggests that viewing a static prime object (a hand grasp), can activate action representations that affect the subsequent identification of graspable target objects. The present study explored whether stronger effects on target object identification would occur when the prime object (a hand grasp) was made more action-rich and dynamic. Of additional interest was whether this type of action prime would affect the generation of motor activity normally elicited by the target object. Three experiments demonstrated that grasp observation improved the identification of grasp-congruent target objects relative to grasp-incongruent target objects. We argue from this data that identifying a graspable object includes the processing of its action-related attributes. In addition, grasp observation was shown to influence the motor activity elicited by the target object, demonstrating interplay between action-based and object-based motor coding.
The present study aimed to demonstrate that motor planning processes are affected by ignored affo... more The present study aimed to demonstrate that motor planning processes are affected by ignored affordances of a main body of an object. Participants were asked to select the hand of response according to the property of the local component (a stalk) of the object (a fruit) while they were holding a precision or a power grip devices. The size of a main body of an object was observed to prime hand selection processes asymmetrically. Right-hand responses were facilitated when the stalk was a part of a precision grip object (e.g. a strawberry) or displayed alone. In contrast, left-hand responses were facilitated when the stalk was a part of a power grip object (e.g. an apple). This data supported our previously presented view that the different hemispheres have differential roles in the early planning of manual actions. The object information that is relevant to precision grip planning appears to be processed predominantly in the left-hemisphere whereas the information that is relevant to power grip planning appears to be processed predominantly in the right-hemisphere. In Experiment 3, the irrelevant fruit body had a slight effect on motor planning even though the stalk was spatially separated from the fruit body. The priming effect was entirely eliminated when, in addition to the spatial separation, the stalk was semantically disassociated from the fruit body (Experiment 4), and when the objects used in Experiment 1 were replaced by two dimensional abstract objects (Experiment 2). Experiments 2, 3 and 4 suggested that affordances of an irrelevant main body of an object influences motor planning processes only when the local target component of the object is analysed as a meaningful part of a graspable object.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2010
There is evidence that preparing and maintaining a motor plan (&a... more There is evidence that preparing and maintaining a motor plan ("motor attention") can bias visual selective attention. For example, a motor attended grasp biases visual attention to select appropriately graspable object features (Symes, Tucker, Ellis, Vainio, & Ottoboni, 2008). According to the biased competition model of selective attention, the relative weightings of stimulus-driven and goal-directed factors determine selection. The current study investigated how the goal-directed bias of motor attention might operate when the stimulus-driven salience of the target was varied. Using a change detection task, two almost identical photographed scenes of simplistic graspable objects were presented flickering back and forth. The target object changed visually, and this change was either high or low salience. Target salience determined whether or not the motor attended grasp significantly biased visual selective attention. Specifically, motor attention only had a reliable influence on target detection times when the visual salience of the target was low.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2007
It has been demonstrated that the task-irrelevant left -right orientation of an object is capable... more It has been demonstrated that the task-irrelevant left -right orientation of an object is capable of facilitating left -right-hand responses when the object is orientated towards the responding hand. We investigated the role of attention in this orientation effect. Experiment 1 showed that object orientation facilitates responses of the hand that is compatible with the object's orientation, despite the entire object being irrelevant. However, when a task-relevant fixation point was displayed over the prime object in Experiment 2, the effect was not observed. Together Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that the orientation information of viewed objects primes the action selection processes even when the object is irrelevant, but only when attention is not allocated to a competing stimulus during the prime presentation. Experiment 3 suggested that the elimination of the effect in Experiment 2 could not be attributed to the elimination of an attentional shift to the graspable part of the prime. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that object orientation can evoke an abstract response code, influencing the selection of finger responses.
The coupling of hand grasping stimuli and the subsequent grasp execution was explored in normal p... more The coupling of hand grasping stimuli and the subsequent grasp execution was explored in normal participants. Participants were asked to respond with their right-or left-hand to the accuracy of an observed (dynamic) grasp while they were holding precision or power grasp response devices in their hands (e.g., precision device/right-hand; power device/left-hand). The observed hand was making either accurate or inaccurate precision or power grasps and participants signalled the accuracy of the observed grip by making one or other response depending on instructions. Responses were made faster when they matched the observed grip type. The two grasp types differed in their sensitivity to the end-state (i.e., accuracy) of the observed grip. The end-state influenced the power grasp congruency effect more than the precision grasp effect when the observed hand was performing the grasp without any goal object . However, the end-state also influenced the precision grip congruency effect (Experiment 3) when the action was object-directed. The data are interpreted as behavioural evidence of the automatic imitation coding of the observed actions. The study suggests that, in goal-oriented imitation coding, the context of an action (e.g., being object-directed) is more important factor in coding precision grips than power grips.
Objective: This study aimed to examine the utility of using color and shape to differentiate drug... more Objective: This study aimed to examine the utility of using color and shape to differentiate drug strength information on over-the-counter medicine packages. Medication errors are an important threat to patient safety, and confusions between drug strengths are a significant source of medication error.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 2008
A series of experiments provide converging support for the hypothesis that action preparation bia... more A series of experiments provide converging support for the hypothesis that action preparation biases selective attention to action-congruent object features. When visual transients are masked in so-called "change blindness" scenes, viewers are blind to substantial changes between two otherwise identical pictures that flick back and forth. We report data in which participants planned a grasp prior to the onset of a change blindness scene in which one of twelve objects changed identity. Changeblindness was substantially reduced for grasp-congruent objects (e.g. planning a whole hand grasp reduced change blindness to a changing apple). A series of followup experiments ruled out an alternative explanation that this reduction had resulted from a labelling or strategising of responses, and provided converging support that the effect genuinely arose from grasp planning.
Three experiments investigated how visual objects prime the actions they afford. The principal co... more Three experiments investigated how visual objects prime the actions they afford. The principal concern was whether such visuomotor priming depends upon a concurrent visual input-as would be expected if it is mediated by on-line dorsal system processes. Experiment 1 showed there to be essentially identical advantages for making afforded over non-afforded responses when these were made to objects still in view and following brief (30 or 50 ms) object exposures that were backward masked. Experiment 2 showed that affordance effects were also unaffected by stimulus degradation. Finally, Experiment 3 showed there to be statistically equal effects from images of objects and their names. The results suggest that an active object representation is sufficient to generate affordance compatibility effects based on associated actions, whether or not the object is concurrently visible.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1998
Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention... more Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention to act. This article describes three experiments that challenged this view through the use of a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm with photographs of common graspable objects as stimuli. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether each object was upright or inverted. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of the irrelevant dimension of left-right object orientation on bimanual and unimanual keypress responses. Experiment 3 examined wrist rotation responses to objects requiring either clockwise or anticlockwise wrist rotations when grasped. The results (a) are consistent with the view that seen objects automatically potentiate components of the actions they afford, (b) show that compatibility effects of an irrelevant stimulus dimension can be obtained across a wide variety of naturally occurring stimuli, and (c) support the view that intentions to act operate on already existing motor representations of the possible actions in a visual scene.
Five experiments systematically investigated whether orientation is a visual object property that... more Five experiments systematically investigated whether orientation is a visual object property that aVords action. The primary aim was to establish the existence of a pure physical aVordance (PPA) of object orientation, independent of any semantic object-action associations or visually salient areas towards which visual attention might be biased. Taken together, the data from these experiments suggest that Wrstly PPAs of object orientation do exist, and secondly, the behavioural eVects that reveal them are larger and more robust when the object appears to be graspable, and is oriented in depth (rather than just frontally) such that its leading edge appears to point outwards in space towards a particular hand of the viewer.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 2007
Four experiments are described in which 1 visual object (the target) was selected from another (t... more Four experiments are described in which 1 visual object (the target) was selected from another (the distractor) according to its color (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or its relative location (Experiment 3) and then was classified according to a simple geometric property. Object classification was signaled as fast as possible by a precision or power grip response, and this grip was either compatible or incompatible with either object. When targets were selected by color, target-compatible grip responses were facilitated, but distractor-compatible grip responses were impaired. When targets were selected by location, similar results were obtained for target-compatible grip responses, but not distractor-compatible grip responses. These data are explained in terms of the involvement of action codes in object-level selection.
Previous research has shown that the task irrelevant size of familiar objects facilitates compati... more Previous research has shown that the task irrelevant size of familiar objects facilitates compatible precision and power grip responses. The present study examined whether the task irrelevant size of novel objects produces the same compatibility effect. However, the main objective of the study was to investigate whether visually primed precision and power grips are manually asymmetric. Experiment 1 showed that the size of a novel prime object does facilitate compatible precision and power grips, even when both the object itself and the grasp type are irrelevant to the current task. However, this effect was only found when the precision grip was made with the right hand (RH) and the power grip was made with the left hand (LH). When these grips were made with the opposite hands, the effect was absent. Experiment 2 replicated the LH bias for large objects and the RH bias for small objects when power and precision grip responses were replaced with simple LH and RH button-press responses. It appears that the two hemispheres are specialised with regard to precision and power compatible objects.
It is suggested that seen objects potentiate a range of actions associated with them, irrespectiv... more It is suggested that seen objects potentiate a range of actions associated with them, irrespective of the intentions of the viewer. Evidence for this possibility is provided by the data from two experiments, both of which required a participant to make a binary motor response to an auditory stimulus. In the ®rst experiment the response was a power or precision grip, which was performed whilst simultaneously viewing a real object which would normally be grasped using either a power or precision grip. A signi®cant interaction of response and grip compatibility of the object was observed. Similar results were obtained in the second experiment when a wrist rotation of a given direction was used as a response, whilst viewing objects which would require wrist rotations if they were to be grasped.
In what we term the orientation effect, faster spatial responses are made to the corresponding ta... more In what we term the orientation effect, faster spatial responses are made to the corresponding task irrelevant orientation of an object. We ask how this effect relates to object affordances, how attention may be involved, and how the effect relates to the better understood Simon effect. Two separate stimulus±response compatibility effects (an orientation effect and a Simon effect) were observed when spatial responses were made to photographs of objects whose orientation and location had been simultaneously manipulated. When attentional demands were high these separate effects were found using hand responses and foot responses, suggesting an abstract rather than specific coding of object affordances. However, when attentional demands were low only the Simon effect was observed, suggesting that, in order to obtain the orientation effect, objects must be represented at the level of an object.
Journal of Experimental Psychology-human Perception and Performance, 1998
Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention... more Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention to act. This article describes three experiments that challenged this view through the use of a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm with photographs of common graspable objects as stimuli. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether each object was upright or inverted. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of the irrelevant dimension of left-right object orientation on bimanual and unimanual keypress responses. Experiment 3 examined wrist rotation responses to objects requiring either clockwise or anticlockwise wrist rotations when grasped. The results (a) are consistent with the view that seen objects automatically potentiate components of the actions they afford, (b) show that compatibility effects of an irrelevant stimulus dimension can be obtained across a wide variety of naturally occurring stimuli, and (c) support the view that intentions to act operate on already existing motor representations of the possible actions in a visual scene.
Three experiments investigated how visual objects prime the actions they afford. The principal co... more Three experiments investigated how visual objects prime the actions they afford. The principal concern was whether such visuomotor priming depends upon a concurrent visual input-as would be expected if it is mediated by on-line dorsal system processes. Experiment 1 showed there to be essentially identical advantages for making afforded over non-afforded responses when these were made to objects still in view and following brief (30 or 50 ms) object exposures that were backward masked. Experiment 2 showed that affordance effects were also unaffected by stimulus degradation. Finally, Experiment 3 showed there to be statistically equal effects from images of objects and their names. The results suggest that an active object representation is sufficient to generate affordance compatibility effects based on associated actions, whether or not the object is concurrently visible.
Recent evidence suggests that viewing a static prime object (a hand grasp), can activate action r... more Recent evidence suggests that viewing a static prime object (a hand grasp), can activate action representations that affect the subsequent identification of graspable target objects. The present study explored whether stronger effects on target object identification would occur when the prime object (a hand grasp) was made more action-rich and dynamic. Of additional interest was whether this type of action prime would affect the generation of motor activity normally elicited by the target object. Three experiments demonstrated that grasp observation improved the identification of grasp-congruent target objects relative to grasp-incongruent target objects. We argue from this data that identifying a graspable object includes the processing of its action-related attributes. In addition, grasp observation was shown to influence the motor activity elicited by the target object, demonstrating interplay between action-based and object-based motor coding.
The present study aimed to demonstrate that motor planning processes are affected by ignored affo... more The present study aimed to demonstrate that motor planning processes are affected by ignored affordances of a main body of an object. Participants were asked to select the hand of response according to the property of the local component (a stalk) of the object (a fruit) while they were holding a precision or a power grip devices. The size of a main body of an object was observed to prime hand selection processes asymmetrically. Right-hand responses were facilitated when the stalk was a part of a precision grip object (e.g. a strawberry) or displayed alone. In contrast, left-hand responses were facilitated when the stalk was a part of a power grip object (e.g. an apple). This data supported our previously presented view that the different hemispheres have differential roles in the early planning of manual actions. The object information that is relevant to precision grip planning appears to be processed predominantly in the left-hemisphere whereas the information that is relevant to power grip planning appears to be processed predominantly in the right-hemisphere. In Experiment 3, the irrelevant fruit body had a slight effect on motor planning even though the stalk was spatially separated from the fruit body. The priming effect was entirely eliminated when, in addition to the spatial separation, the stalk was semantically disassociated from the fruit body (Experiment 4), and when the objects used in Experiment 1 were replaced by two dimensional abstract objects (Experiment 2). Experiments 2, 3 and 4 suggested that affordances of an irrelevant main body of an object influences motor planning processes only when the local target component of the object is analysed as a meaningful part of a graspable object.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2010
There is evidence that preparing and maintaining a motor plan (&a... more There is evidence that preparing and maintaining a motor plan ("motor attention") can bias visual selective attention. For example, a motor attended grasp biases visual attention to select appropriately graspable object features (Symes, Tucker, Ellis, Vainio, & Ottoboni, 2008). According to the biased competition model of selective attention, the relative weightings of stimulus-driven and goal-directed factors determine selection. The current study investigated how the goal-directed bias of motor attention might operate when the stimulus-driven salience of the target was varied. Using a change detection task, two almost identical photographed scenes of simplistic graspable objects were presented flickering back and forth. The target object changed visually, and this change was either high or low salience. Target salience determined whether or not the motor attended grasp significantly biased visual selective attention. Specifically, motor attention only had a reliable influence on target detection times when the visual salience of the target was low.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2007
It has been demonstrated that the task-irrelevant left -right orientation of an object is capable... more It has been demonstrated that the task-irrelevant left -right orientation of an object is capable of facilitating left -right-hand responses when the object is orientated towards the responding hand. We investigated the role of attention in this orientation effect. Experiment 1 showed that object orientation facilitates responses of the hand that is compatible with the object's orientation, despite the entire object being irrelevant. However, when a task-relevant fixation point was displayed over the prime object in Experiment 2, the effect was not observed. Together Experiments 1 and 2 suggest that the orientation information of viewed objects primes the action selection processes even when the object is irrelevant, but only when attention is not allocated to a competing stimulus during the prime presentation. Experiment 3 suggested that the elimination of the effect in Experiment 2 could not be attributed to the elimination of an attentional shift to the graspable part of the prime. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that object orientation can evoke an abstract response code, influencing the selection of finger responses.
The coupling of hand grasping stimuli and the subsequent grasp execution was explored in normal p... more The coupling of hand grasping stimuli and the subsequent grasp execution was explored in normal participants. Participants were asked to respond with their right-or left-hand to the accuracy of an observed (dynamic) grasp while they were holding precision or power grasp response devices in their hands (e.g., precision device/right-hand; power device/left-hand). The observed hand was making either accurate or inaccurate precision or power grasps and participants signalled the accuracy of the observed grip by making one or other response depending on instructions. Responses were made faster when they matched the observed grip type. The two grasp types differed in their sensitivity to the end-state (i.e., accuracy) of the observed grip. The end-state influenced the power grasp congruency effect more than the precision grasp effect when the observed hand was performing the grasp without any goal object . However, the end-state also influenced the precision grip congruency effect (Experiment 3) when the action was object-directed. The data are interpreted as behavioural evidence of the automatic imitation coding of the observed actions. The study suggests that, in goal-oriented imitation coding, the context of an action (e.g., being object-directed) is more important factor in coding precision grips than power grips.
Uploads
Papers by mike tucker