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Action does not drive visual biases in peri-tool space

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Abstract

Observers experience visual biases in the area around handheld tools. These biases may occur when active use leads an observer to incorporate a tool into the body schema. However, the visual salience of a handheld tool may instead create an attentional prioritization that is not reliant on body-based representations. We investigated these competing explanations of near-tool visual biases in two experiments during which participants performed a target detection task. Targets could appear near or far from a tool positioned next to a display. In Experiment 1, participants showed facilitation in detecting targets that appeared near a simple handheld rake tool regardless of whether they first used the rake to retrieve objects, but participants who only viewed the tool without holding it were no faster to detect targets appearing near the rake than targets that appeared on the opposite side of the display. In a second experiment, participants who held a novel magnetic tool again showed a near-tool bias even when they refrained from using the tool. Taken together, these results suggest active use is unnecessary, but visual salience is not sufficient, to introduce visual biases in peri-tool space.

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Notes

  1. We present analyses collapsed across the factor of cue validity for ease of presentation. The results of a 3 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed-factors ANOVA including the validity factor are available in the Supplemental Materials section.

  2. The factor of target distance corresponds to the target’s location with respect to the rake when it was held or placed next to the display (near versus far).

  3. We present analyses collapsed across the factor of cue validity for ease of presentation. The results of a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed-factors ANOVA including the validity factor are available in the Supplemental Materials section.

  4. The small (i.e., 5–20 ms) but statistically significant near-tool effects we observed were consistent with previous findings using this paradigm (McManus & Thomas, 2020; Reed et al., 2010).

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BCS #1556336).

Open practices statement

Raw and trimmed data are available for all experiments are available (https://osf.io/u58q7/?view_only=090cd14fbb954f04a61702fe2d5f9381). Neither of the experiments were preregistered.

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  1. Center for Visual and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA

    Robert McManus & Laura E. Thomas

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  1. Robert McManus
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  2. Laura E. Thomas
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Correspondence to Laura E. Thomas.

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McManus, R., Thomas, L.E. Action does not drive visual biases in peri-tool space. Atten Percept Psychophys 86, 525–535 (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-023-02826-x

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