Automatic motor activation in the executive control of action

Abstract

Although executive control and automatic behavior have often been considered separate and distinct processes, there is strong emerging and convergent evidence that they may in fact be intricately interlinked. In this review, we draw together evidence showing that visual stimuli cause automatic and unconscious motor activation, and how this in turn has implications for executive control. We discuss object affordances, alien limb syndrome, the visual grasp reflex, subliminal priming, and subliminal triggering of attentional orienting. Consideration of these findings suggests automatic motor activation might form an intrinsic part of all behavior, rather than being categorically different from voluntary actions.

The reversal of perceptual and motor compatibility effects differs qualitatively between metacontrast and random-line masks

“…Taking both theories into account, recent studies on NCE assume that the NCE origin can be both perceptual and motor. However, depending on the types of masks and stimuli used, one component (perceptual vs. motor) may play a more prominent role than the other (Boy & Sumner, 2010;McBride, Boy, Husain, & Sumner, 2012). This important assumption has not yet been directly tested.…”

“…Importantly, this form of motor inhibition is assumed to take place automatically and without any voluntary intention to suppress the prime response. Indeed, participants are generally not aware of the brief task-irrelevant stimulus, and are not instructed to employ response inhibition (Boy, Husain, & Sumner, 2010c;McBride et al, 2012). Supporting the motor locus of the inhibitory mechanism, several studies using irrelevant masks (mainly random-line masks) have shown that the SMA may be the source of the inhibition process, that is, the brain area that causes suppression (Boy, Evans, Edden, Singh, Husain, & Sunmer, 2010a;Sumner, Nachev, Morris, Peters, Jackson, & Kennard, 2007).…”

Saccade-like behavior in the fast-phases of optokinetic nystagmus: An illustration of the emergence of volitional actions from automatic reflexes.

“…By emphasising the apparent differences between automatic and volitional behaviour we may be missing the opportunity to learn about complex 'volitional' systems from studying the more tractable automatic mechanisms; the classic distinction may actually be unhelpful for penetrating the mysteries of volition itself. Some lines of research have begun to emphasise the connections, rather than the distinctions, between processes that appear automatic or volitional, as a means to begin understanding how 'volitional' processes might have developed from 'automatic' ones (for reviews, see McBride, Boy, Husain, & Sumner, 2012;Sumner & Husain, 2008). In this view, the 'driver' is not a distinct mechanism from the 'cruise control' that operates in parallel and occasionally takes command; rather the cruise control system incrementally becomes more sophisticated and able to flexibly handle all the tricky situations.…”

Why We Are Not All Novelists

“…To the extent that the proper functioning of the frontal executive control is involved, we can note that this is connected with automatic, unconscious processes that inhibit motor activation across all aspects of cognition (McBride et al 2012). When we willingly enter into an alternative reality, however, we do not want to be continually distracted by constant reminders from the conflict-monitoring alarm system telling us that the fictional world we are enjoying is not real (Wise 2012).…”