Do already grasped objects activate motor affordances?

Abstract

This study investigated whether in a stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) task affordance effects in response to picture of graspable objects emerge when these objects appear as already grasped. It also assessed whether the observed effects could be explained as due to spatial compatibility between the most salient part in the object/display and the hand of response rather than to action potentiation. To this aim, we conducted three behavioural experiments in which participants were required to discriminate the vertical orientation (upright vs. inverted) of an object presented in the centre of the screen, while ignoring the right-left orientation of its handle. The object could be presented alone, as already grasped, as partially masked (Experiment 1) or with a human hand close to its graspable side (Experiment 2). In addition, to assess the role of perceptual salience, the object could be presented with a human hand or a non-biological (a geometrical shape) distractor located opposite to the object's graspable side. Results showed faster responses when the object's handle was located on the same side of the responding hand with a larger effect when upright objects were shown as already grasped (Experiment 1) or when a hand was displayed close to its handle (Experiment 2), and a smaller reversed effect when the hand or the geometrical shape was located opposite to the handled side (Experiment 3). We interpreted these findings as indicating that handle orientation effects emerging in SRC tasks may result from the interplay between motor affordance and spatial compatibility mechanisms.

Exploring the Role of Action Consequences in the Handle-Response Compatibility Effect

“…That is, responses were faster when the position of the handle and the responding hand were spatially aligned as compared to when they were not. This result was replicated with neurophysiological measures (e.g., Kourtis and Vingerhoets, 2015) and obtained across different tasks (e.g., Tipper et al, 2006;Saccone et al, 2016), stimuli (e.g., Pellicano et al, 2010;Pappas, 2014;Iani et al, 2018;Scerrati et al, 2019Scerrati et al, , 2020, populations (e.g., Dekker and Mareschal, 2013), response devices (e.g., Bub and Masson, 2010), and response modes (e.g., Phillips and Ward, 2002;Cho and Proctor, 2010;Proctor et al, 2017;Bub et al, 2018; for a review see Proctor and Miles, 2014; for a recent meta-analysis see Azaad et al, 2019).…”

“…Practice trials, reaction times (RTs) faster or slower than 2 SD from the participant’s mean (2.7% of the total trials) and errors (3.4% of the total trials) were excluded from the analysis on RTs. For simplicity and in line with previous studies (e.g., Iani et al, 2018 ), data were collapsed based on the spatial compatibility between handle orientation and response position (handle-response compatible vs. handle-response incompatible trials).…”

“…The handle-response (H-R) compatibility effect (Iani et al, 2018;Pellicano et al, 2020), also known as handle-alignment (Bub et al, 2018) and object-based correspondence effect (Lien et al, 2013), refers to the finding of faster and more accurate responses when the position of an object's graspable component (i.e., the handle) and the stimulus' required response lay on the same side compared to when they lay on opposite sides.…”

“…The H-R compatibility effect has been argued to reflect the activation of action potentiation mechanisms driven by the affordances ( Gibson, 1979 ) of objects (e.g., Tucker and Ellis, 1998 ; Tipper et al, 2006 ; Pellicano et al, 2010 ; Iani et al, 2011 , 2018 ; Pappas, 2014 ; Saccone et al, 2016 ). That is, perceiving action-relevant visual features of objects such as a cup’s handle might trigger the affordance for grasping it with the left or right hand, which in turn generates a left or right code consisting of the activation of limb-specific motor patterns.…”

Corrigendum: Exploring the Role of Action Consequences in the Handle-Response Compatibility Effect

“…That is, responses were faster when the position of the handle and the responding hand were spatially aligned as compared to when they were not. This result was replicated across different tasks (e.g., Tipper et al, 2006;Saccone et al, 2016), stimuli (e.g., Pellicano et al, 2010;Pappas, 2014;Iani et al, 2018;Scerrati et al, 2019Scerrati et al, , 2020, populations (e.g., Dekker and Mareschal, 2013), response devices (e.g., Bub and Masson, 2010), and response modes (e.g., Phillips and Ward, 2002;Cho and Proctor, 2010;Proctor et al, 2017;Bub et al, 2018; for a review see Proctor and Miles, 2014; for a recent meta-analysis see Azaad et al, 2019).…”