Helbig Hannah Barbara, Graf Markus, Kiefer Markus
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Spemannstr. 38, 72076, Tubingen, Germany.
Exp Brain Res. 2006 Sep;174(2):221-8. doi: 10.1007/s00221-006-0443-5. Epub 2006 Apr 25.
It is typically assumed that perception for action and object recognition are subserved by functionally and neuroanatomically distinct processing streams in the brain. However, recent evidence challenges this classical view and suggests an interaction between both visual processing streams. While previous studies showed an influence of object perception on action-related tasks, we investigated whether action representations facilitate visual object recognition. In order to address this question, two briefly displayed masked objects were sequentially presented, either affording congruent or incongruent motor interactions. We found superior naming accuracy for object pairs with congruent as compared to incongruent motor interactions (Experiment 1). This action priming effect indicates that action representations can facilitate object recognition. We further investigated the nature of the representations underlying this action priming effect. The effect was absent when the prime stimulus was presented as a word (Experiment 2). Thus, the action priming effect seems to rely on action representations specified by visual object information. Our findings suggest that processes of object-directed action influence object recognition.
通常认为，大脑中用于动作的感知和物体识别由功能和神经解剖学上不同的处理流提供支持。然而，最近的证据对这一经典观点提出了挑战，并表明两个视觉处理流之间存在相互作用。虽然先前的研究显示物体感知对与动作相关的任务有影响，但我们研究了动作表征是否有助于视觉物体识别。为了解决这个问题，我们依次呈现了两个短暂显示的掩蔽物体，它们要么提供一致的，要么提供不一致的运动交互。我们发现，与不一致的运动交互相比，具有一致运动交互的物体对的命名准确性更高（实验1）。这种动作启动效应表明动作表征可以促进物体识别。我们进一步研究了这种动作启动效应背后的表征性质。当启动刺激以单词形式呈现时，这种效应不存在（实验2）。因此，动作启动效应似乎依赖于由视觉物体信息指定的动作表征。我们的研究结果表明，目标导向动作的过程会影响物体识别。
