Garner-Interference in left-handed awkward grasping.

The Perception-Action Model (PAM) claims to provide a coherent interpretation of data from all areas of the visual neurosciences, most notably data from neuropsychological patients and from behavioral experiments in healthy people. Here, we tested two claims that are part of the core version of the PAM: (a) certain actions (natural, highly practiced, and right-handed) are controlled by the dorsal vision for action pathway, while other actions (awkward, unpracticed, or left-handed) are controlled by the ventral vision for perception pathway. (b) Only the dorsal pathway operates in an analytical fashion, being able to selectively focus on the task-relevant dimension of an object (Ganel and Goodale, Nature 426(6967):664-667, 2003). We show that one of these claims must be wrong: using the same test for analytical processing as Ganel and Goodale (2003), we found that even an action that should clearly be ventral (left-handed awkward grasping) shows analytical processing just as a dorsal task does (right-handed natural precision grasping). These results are at odds with the PAM and point to an inconsistency of the model.

Using Key Distance to Clarify a Theory on the SNARC.

The most prominent explanation for the spatial numerical association of response codes (SNARC) effect is the direct mapping account (DMA). The DMA assumes that (a) numbers are represented on a mental number line, (b) this mental number line is mapped to external space, and (c) the better the mapping location corresponds to the response location, the faster the response. The DMA leaves open whether a variation of response locations can (ceteris paribus) influence the location to which numbers are mapped in external space. In order to investigate this question, we varied response key distance during a standard parity judgment and a magnitude judgment task. We found that even drastic manipulations of response key distance did not modulate the SNARC effect. Power and meta-analyses show that this null effect is not due to insufficient statistical power or a poor experimental setup. Thus, our results indicate that, in order for the DMA to explain the SNARC effect, it must assume that the mapping from the mental number line to external space is anchored to response location. For future research, our results suggest that it is not necessary to control the horizontal separation of the response keys in basic SNARC experiments.

The SNARC Effect in Chinese Numerals: Do Visual Properties of Characters and Hand Signs Influence Number Processing?

The SNARC effect refers to an association of numbers and spatial properties of responses that is commonly thought to be amodal and independent of stimulus notation. We tested for a horizontal SNARC effect using Arabic digits, simple-form Chinese characters and Chinese hand signs in participants from Mainland China. We found a horizontal SNARC effect in all notations. This is the first time that a horizontal SNARC effect has been demonstrated in Chinese characters and Chinese hand signs. We tested for the SNARC effect in two experiments (parity judgement and magnitude judgement). The parity judgement task yielded clear, consistent SNARC effects in all notations, whereas results were more mixed in magnitude judgement. Both Chinese characters and Chinese hand signs are represented non-symbolically for low numbers and symbolically for higher numbers, allowing us to contrast within the same notation the effects of heavily learned non-symbolic vs. symbolic representation on the processing of numbers. In addition to finding a horizontal SNARC effect, we also found a robust numerical distance effect in all notations. This is particularly interesting as it persisted when participants reported using purely visual features to solve the task, thereby suggesting that numbers were processed semantically even when the task could be solved without the semantic information.

Need for space: the key distance effect depends on spatial stimulus configurations.

In numerous psychological experiments, participants classify stimuli by pressing response keys. According to Lakens, Schneider, Jostmann, and Schubert (2011), classification performance is affected by physical distance between response keys--indicating a cognitive tendency to represent categories in spatial code. However, previous evidence for a key distance effect (KDE) from a color-naming Stroop task is inconclusive as to whether: (a) key separation automatically leads to an internal spatial representation of non-spatial stimulus characteristics in participants, or if the KDE rather depends on physical spatial characteristics of the stimulus configuration; (b) the KDE attenuates the Stroop interference effect. We therefore first adopted the original Stroop task in Experiment 1, confirming that wider key distance facilitated responses, but did not modulate the Stroop effect as was previously found. In Experiments 2 and 3 we controlled potential mediator variables in the original design. When we did not display instructions about stimulus-response mappings, thereby removing the unintended spatial context from the Stroop stimuli, no KDE emerged. Presenting the instructions at a central position in Experiment 4 confirmed that key separation alone is not sufficient for a KDE, but correspondence between spatial configurations of stimuli and responses is also necessary. Evidence indicates that the KDE on Stroop performance is due to known mechanisms of stimulus-response compatibility and response discriminability. The KDE does, however, not demonstrate a general disposition to represent any stimulus in spatial code.

Effects of object shape on the visual guidance of action.

Little is known of how visual coding of the shape of an object affects grasping movements. We addressed this issue by investigating the influence of shape perturbations on grasping. Twenty-six participants grasped a disc or a bar that were chosen such that they could in principle be grasped with identical movements (i.e., relevant sizes were identical such that the final grips consisted of identical separations of the fingers and no parts of the objects constituted obstacles for the movement). Nevertheless, participants took object shape into account and grasped the bar with a larger maximum grip aperture and a different hand angle than the disc. In 20% of the trials, the object changed its shape from bar to disc or vice versa early or late during the movement. If there was enough time (early perturbations), grasps were often adapted in flight to the new shape. These results show that the motor system takes into account even small and seemingly irrelevant changes of object shape and adapts the movement in a fine-grained manner. Although this adaptation might seem computationally expensive, we presume that its benefits (e.g., a more comfortable and more accurate movement) outweigh the costs.