Can blindness to response-compatible stimuli be observed in the absence of a response?

Abstract

Blindness to response-compatible stimuli is the finding that targets are identified less accurately when presented during the planning or execution of a congruent response (e.g., right arrow presented during a right keypress) versus an incongruent response (e.g., right arrow presented during a left keypress). Accounts of this effect suggest the planning and execution of a response are critical to its observation. Five experiments investigated whether a blindness effect would be observed in the absence of a planned response. Results suggest that a planned response is not necessary to observe a content-specific blindness effect and that the blindness effect may actually comprise both an action-related component and a symbolic component that is distinct from the action-planning system.

Response preparation and code overlap in dual tasks

“…The opposite effect-namely, that speeded response selection or initiation produces cross-task compatibility effects in a logically unrelated visual-encoding task-has also been demonstrated repeatedly in the literature (e.g., Müsseler & Hommel, 1997;Müsseler & Wühr, 2002;Stevanovski et al, 2003). In these demonstrations, the identification of a left-or right-pointing arrowhead was impaired if the pointing direction spatially corresponded to another, logically unrelated code formed in the context of a different task, giving rise to "blindness" to compatible stimuli (Müsseler & Hommel, 1997).…”

“…Importantly, this cross-task compatibility effect also differs from those dual-task code overlap effects previously reported in the literature. Whereas the present cross-task compatibility effect is based on dual-task priming from a nonspeeded visual-encoding task to a speeded, precued response task, previous effects pertained either to an effect between two speeded choice RT tasks (e.g., Hommel, 1998;Lien & Proctor, 2000;Logan & Gordon, 2001;Schuch & Koch, 2004) or to an effect on accuracy in a nonspeeded visual task (e.g., Müsseler & Hommel, 1997;Stevanovski, Oriet, & Jolicoeur, 2003).…”

“…However, a more interesting explanation for this empirical difference might be that arrowheads, as compared with spatial movement stimuli, provide spatial information in a more symbolic format. Possibly, suppression effects such as the "blindness" effect with symbolic spatial information (i.e., arrowheads) are based on more abstract levels of representation (see Stevanovski et al, 2003), whereas code overlap with more "direct" spatial codes rather leads to facilitation. Resolving this possibility appears to be an important issue for further research.…”

“…Perhaps less interesting, there are many procedural differences. For instance, Müsseler and Hommel (1997) and Stevanovski et al (2003) used an adaptive staircase method to adjust the masking, so that participants always performed at intermediate levels in the visual task, whereas no such method was used in the present experiments. However, a more interesting explanation for this empirical difference might be that arrowheads, as compared with spatial movement stimuli, provide spatial information in a more symbolic format.…”

Neural processes for action observation

“…Müsseler and Hommel first described an apparent blindness to response-compatible visual stimuli, calling it action-affected blindness (Müsseler & Hommel, 1997). This effect later was replicated by several studies, all using a very similar method (Müsseler et al, 2000;Nishimura & Yokosawa, 2010;Stevanovski et al, 2002Stevanovski et al, , 2003Stevanovski et al, , 2006. Participants plan left or right keypresses, but, just before they execute the action, an arrow is presented very briefly and they must report whether the arrow is pointing left or right.…”