Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK.
Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (ISIR), Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 31;9(1):11084. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-47640-4.
Action preparation can facilitate performance in tasks of visual perception, for instance by speeding up responses to action-relevant stimulus features. However, it is unknown whether this facilitation reflects an influence on early perceptual processing, or instead post-perceptual processes. In three experiments, a combination of psychophysics and electroencephalography was used to investigate whether visual features are influenced by action preparation at the perceptual level. Participants were cued to prepare oriented reach-to-grasp actions before discriminating target stimuli oriented in the same direction as the prepared grasping action (congruent) or not (incongruent). As expected, stimuli were discriminated faster if their orientation was congruent, compared to incongruent, with the prepared action. However, action-congruency had no influence on perceptual sensitivity, regardless of cue-target interval and discrimination difficulty. The reaction time effect was not accompanied by modulations of early visual-evoked potentials. Instead, beta-band (13-30 Hz) synchronization over sensorimotor brain regions was influenced by action preparation, indicative of improved response preparation. Together, the results suggest that action preparation may not modulate early visual processing of orientation, but likely influences higher order response or decision related processing. While early effects of action on spatial perception are well documented, separate mechanisms appear to govern non-spatial feature selection.
动作准备可以促进视觉感知任务的表现，例如通过加快对与动作相关的刺激特征的反应。然而，尚不清楚这种促进作用是反映在早期感知处理上，还是反映在后感知处理上。在三个实验中，使用心理物理学和脑电图相结合的方法来研究动作准备是否会在感知水平上影响视觉特征。参与者在辨别与准备的抓取动作方向相同（一致）或不同（不一致）的目标刺激之前，被提示准备定向伸手抓取动作。如预期的那样，如果目标刺激的方向与准备的动作一致，那么与不一致相比，刺激的辨别速度更快。然而，无论提示-目标间隔和辨别难度如何，动作一致性都不会影响感知敏感性。反应时效应没有伴随着早期视觉诱发电位的调制。相反，动作准备影响感觉运动脑区的β频段（13-30Hz）同步，表明反应准备得到了改善。总之，结果表明，动作准备可能不会调节朝向的早期视觉处理，但可能会影响更高阶的反应或决策相关处理。虽然动作对空间感知的早期影响已有充分记录，但似乎有单独的机制来控制非空间特征选择。
