Automatic visuomotor corrections: Implications for attentional selection

Abstract

Literature has suggested that attentional selection of objects or visual space for perception and action may share a common attentional mechanism and that selecting an object or region of visual space for one purpose obligatorily couples selection for the other. Previous experimental paradigms demonstrate only that coupling is evident when selection for perception is preceded by a target being selected for action. Two experimental paradigms in which participants made fast manual pointing movements following the correct identification of either a discrimination cue or a peripheral onset sought to investigate coupling of attentional selection where selection for perception preceded section for action. In these dual-task paradigms, participants’ efficiency in making fast visuomotor correction to a displacement of the pointing targets was used as an indicator for determining the focus of dorsal attention for action. The cueing for perceptual attention had no significant effect on the correction efficiencies or other kinematic variables of pointing movements. The findings suggest evidence against coupling of selection for action following a requirement to select an object or area for perception and in its conclusions this study proposes that selection for perception may follow selection for action but the same results cannot be reproduced vice versa.