Skip to main content

Do already grasped objects activate motor affordances?

Psychological Research volume 83, pages 1363–1374 (2019)Cite this article

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Access options

Buy single article

Instant access to the full article PDF.

43,34 €

Price includes VAT (Finland)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Fig. 1

Notes

  1. Throughout the manuscript we use the term “affordance effect” when referring to the possible influences on performance exerted by action-related objects’ features, while we use the term “handle orientation effect” when referring to handle–response correspondence effects.

References

  • Adamo, M., & Ferber, S. (2009). A picture says more than a thousand words: behavioural and ERP evidence for attentional enhancements due to action affordances. Neuropsychologia, 47(6), 1600–1608. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.07.009.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, S. J., Yamagishi, N., & Karavia, V. (2002). Attention processes link perception and action. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 269(1497), 1225–1232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bach, P., Bayliss, A. P., & Tipper, S. P. (2010). The predictive mirror: interactions of mirror and affordance processes during action observation. Psychomomic Bulletin Review, 18, 171–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bach, P., Nicholson, T., & Hudson, M. (2014). The affordance-matching hypothesis: how objects guide action understanding and prediction. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 254. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00254.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Borghi, A. M., Bonfiglioli, C., Lugli, L., Ricciardelli, P., Rubichi, S., & Nicoletti, R. (2006). Are visual stimuli sufficient to evoke motor information? Studies with hand primes. Neuroscience Letters, 411, 17–21.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Borghi, A. M., & Riggio, L. (2015). Stable and variable affordances are both automatic and flexible. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 351.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Brass, M., Bekkering, H., & Prinz, W. (2001). Movement observation affects movement execution in a simple response task. Acta Psychologica, 106, 3–22.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bub, D. N., & Masson, M. E. J. (2010). Grasping beer mugs: On the dynamics of alignment effects induced by handled objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36, 341–358.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bub, D. N., Masson, M. E. J., & Kumar, R. (2017). Time course of motor affordances evoked by pictured objects and words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000431. [Epub ahead of print].

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Buccino, G., Sato, M., Cattaneo, L., & Riggio, L. (2009). Broken affordances, broken objects: A TMS study. Neuropsychologia, 47, 3074–3078.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cardellicchio, P., Sinigaglia, C., & Costantini, M. (2013). Grasping affordances with the other’s hand: A TMS study. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8, 455–459.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chao, L. L., & Martin, A. (2000). Representation of manipulable man-made objects in the dorsal stream. Neuroimage, 12, 478–484.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cho, D. T., & Proctor, R. W. (2010). The object-based Simon effect: Grasping affordance or relative location of the graspable part? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36, 853–861. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019328.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cho, D. T., & Proctor, R. W. (2011). Correspondence effects for objects with opposing left and right protrusions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 37, 737–749. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021934.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cho, D. T., & Proctor, R. W. (2013). Object-based correspondence effects for action-relevant and surface-property judgments with keypress responses: evidence for a basis in spatial coding. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 77, 618–636. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-012-0458-4.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Costantini, M., Ambrosini, E., Tieri, G., Sinigaglia, C., & Committeri, G. (2010). Where does an object trigger an action? An investigation about affordances in space. Experimental Brain Research, 207, 95–103.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, R., Swabey, D., Bridgeman, J., May, B., Tucker, M., & Hyne, A. (2013). Bodies and other visual objects: the dialectics of reaching toward objects. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 77, 31–39.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ellis, R., & Tucker, M. (2000). Micro-affordance: The potentiation of components of action by seen objects. British Journal of Psychology, 91, 451–471.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Emmanouil, T. A., & Ro, T. (2014). Amodal completion of unconsciously presented objects. Psychonomic Bulettin and Review, 21(5), 1188–1194. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0590-9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferraro, L., Iani, C., Mariani, M., Nicoletti, R., Gallese, V., et al. (2012). Look What I Am Doing: Does Observational Learning Take Place in Evocative Task-Sharing Situations? PLoS One, 7(8), e43311. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043311.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Fini, C., Brass, M., & Committeri, G. (2015). Social scaling of extrapersonal space: Target objects are judged as closer when the reference frame is a human agent with available movement potentialities. Cognition, 134, 50–56.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Franca, M., Turella, L., Canto, R., Brunelli, N., Allione, L., Andreasi, N. G., et al. (2012). Corticospinal Facilitation during Observation of Graspable Objects: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study. PLoS One, 7(11), e49025. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049025.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain, 119, 593–609.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gallese, V., Gernsbacher, M. A., Heyes, C., Hickock, G., & Iacoboni, M. (2011). Mirror neuron forum. Perspective in Psychological Science, 6, 347–369.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gazzola, V., & Keysers, C. (2009). The observation and execution of actions share motor and somatosensory voxels in all tested subjects: single-subject analyses of unsmoothed fMRI data. Cerebral Cortex, 19, 1239–1255.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Girardi, G., Lindemann, O., & Bekkering, H. (2010). Context effects on the processing of action-relavant object features. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(2), 330–340.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Goslin, J., Dixon, T., Fischer, M. H., Cangelosi, A., & Ellis, R. (2012). Electrophysiological examination of embodiment in vision and action. Psychological Science, 23, 152–157. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611429578.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Grützner, C., Uhlhaas, P. J., Genc, E., Kohler, A., Singer, W., & Wibral, M. (2010). Neuroelectromagnetic correlates of perceptual closure processes. The Journal of Neuroscience, 30(24), 8342–8352.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Hommel, B. (2009). Action control according to TEC (theory of event coding). Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 73, 512–526.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hommel, B., Müsseler, J., Aschersleben, G., & Prinz, W. (2001). The theory of event coding (TEC): A framework for perception and action planning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 849–878.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Iani, C., Baroni, G., Pellicano, A., & Nicoletti, R. (2011). On the relationship between affordance and Simon effects: Are the effects really independent? Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 23, 121–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iani, C., Rubichi, S., Ferraro, L., Nicoletti, R., & Gallese, V. (2013). Observational learning without a model is influenced by the observer’s possibility to act: Evidence from the Simon task. Cognition, 128(1), 26–34.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jeannerod, M. (2001). Neural simulation of action: a unifying mechanism for motor cognition. Neuroimage, 14, 103–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kornblum, S., Hasbroucq, T., & Osman, A. (1990). Dimensional overlap: Cognitive basis for stimulus-response compatibility—a model and taxonomy. Psychological Review, 97, 253–270.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kourtis, D., & Vingerhoets, G. (2015). Perceiving objects by their function: An EEG study on feature saliency and prehensile affordances. Biological Psychology, 110, 138–147.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lien, M. C., Jardin, E., & Proctor, R. W. (2013). An electrophysiological study of the object-based correspondence effect: is the effect triggered by an intended grasping action? Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 75, 1862–1882. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-013-0523-0.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maranesi, M., Bonini, L., & Fogassi, L. (2014). Cortical processing of object affordances for self and others’ action. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 538.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Masson, M. E. J., Bub, D. N., & Breuer, A. T. (2011). Priming of reach and grasp actions by handled objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 37, 1470–1484.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Matheson, H., Newman, A. J., Satel, J., & McMullen, P. (2014). Handles of manipulable objects attract covert visual attention: ERP evidence. Brain and Cognition, 86, 17–23.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Matheson, H. E., White, N. C., & McMullen, P. A. (2014). A test of the embodied simulation theory of object perception: Potentiation of responses to artifacts and animals. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 78, 465–482.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Morrisey, M. N., & Rutherford, M. D. (2013). Do hands attract attention? Visual Cognition, 21(5), 647–672. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2013.817495.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murray, R. F., Sekuler, A. B., & Bennett, P. J. (2001). Time course of amodal completion revealed by a shape discrimination task. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 8(4), 713–720.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ottoboni, G., Iani, C., Tessari, A., & Rubichi, S. (2013). Modulation of the affordance effect through transfer of learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66(12), 2295–2302.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pappas, Z. (2014). Dissociating Simon and affordance compatibility effects. Silhouettes and photographs. Cognition, 133, 716–728. https://doi.org/10.1080/174702105004162243.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pellicano, A., Iani, C., Borghi, A. M., Rubichi, S., & Nicoletti, R. (2010). Simon-like and functional affordance effects with tools: The effects of objects perceptual discrimination and object action state. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 2190–2201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Riggio, L., Iani, C., Gherri, E., Benatti, F., Rubichi, S., & Nicoletti, R. (2008). The role of attention in the occurrence of the affordance effect. Acta Psychologica, 127, 449–458.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenbaum, D. A., Marchak, F., Barnes, H. J., Vaughan, J., Slotta, J., & Jorgensen, M. (1990). Constraints for action selection: overhand versus underhand grips. In M. Jeannerod (Ed.), Attention and Performance XIII: Motor Representation and Control (pp. 321–342). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saccone, E. J., Churches, O., & Nicholls, M. E. R. (2016). Explicit spatial compatibility is not critical to the object handle effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000258 (Online First Publication, June 2016).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sartori, L., Cavallo, A., Bucchioni, G., & Castiello, U. (2012). From simulation to reciprocity: The case of complementary actions. Social Neuroscience, 7, 146–158.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Snodgrass, J. G., & Feenan, K. (1990). Priming effects in picture fragment completion: support for the perceptual closure hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 119, 276–296.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tucker, M., & Ellis, R. (1998). On the relations between seen objects and components of potential actions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 830–846.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vainio, L., Symes, E., Ellis, R., Tucker, M., & Ottoboni, G. (2008). On the relations between action planning, object identification, and motor representations of observed actions and objects. Cognition, 108, 444–465.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Vingerhoets, G., Vandamme, K., & Vercammen, A. (2009). Conceptual and physical object qualities contribute differently to motor affordances. Brain and Cognition, 69, 481–489.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yoon, E. Y., & Humphreys, W. W. (2005). Direct and indirect effects of action on object classification. Memory & Cognition, 33(7), 1131–1146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Funding

This work was supported by a grant (Fondo di Ateneo FAR 2014) from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia to Cristina Iani.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication and Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Viale Allegri 9, 42121, Reggio Emilia, Italy

    Cristina Iani, Luca Ferraro & Natale Vincenzo Maiorana

  2. Center for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

    Cristina Iani & Sandro Rubichi

  3. Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Vittorio Gallese

  4. Department of Education and Human Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy

    Sandro Rubichi

Authors
  1. Cristina Iani
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Luca Ferraro
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Natale Vincenzo Maiorana
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Vittorio Gallese
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Sandro Rubichi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cristina Iani.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The manuscript does not report clinical studies or patient data. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study fulfilled the ethical standard procedure recommended by the Italian Association of Psychology (AIP). It was approved by the Department of Communication and Economics of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Iani, C., Ferraro, L., Maiorana, N.V. et al. Do already grasped objects activate motor affordances?. Psychological Research 83, 1363–1374 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1004-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-018-1004-9