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The time course of visuo-motor affordances

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Abstract

To measure dynamic visuo-motor coupling within the two hemispheres, we showed observers an animation of a rotating cup. They indicated with left or right buttons when a fixation dot in the center of the animation changed color. For either hand, response times changed continuously with the irrelevant position of the cup’s handle, even when the perceptual asymmetry of the handle was controlled. This spontaneous lateralized motor preparation showed both top-down and bottom-up components and was more pronounced for the right than the left hand. The dynamic affordance method will help understand perception–action coupling in the brain.

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Notes

  1. We averaged across cup rotations as this factor did not reliably interact with the other factors in RT, all P > 0.18. The only reliable interaction for cup rotation was with response buttons in the error rates, F(2, 38) = 3.48, P < 0.05, MSE = 127.56, eta2 = 0.16, due to a transition from more left to more right errors with later rotations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 4HN, UK

    Martin H. Fischer

  2. Institute of Neuroinformatics ETHZ/UNIZH, Zurich, Switzerland

    Christoph D. Dahl

Authors
  1. Martin H. Fischer
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  2. Christoph D. Dahl
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Correspondence to Martin H. Fischer.

Additional information

MHF was supported by the British Academy through grant SG-39222. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

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Fischer, M.H., Dahl, C.D. The time course of visuo-motor affordances. Exp Brain Res 176, 519–524 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0781-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-006-0781-3

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