Effect of structuring the workspace on cognitive and sensorimotor distance estimation: No dissociation between perception and action

Abstract

Independent processing of visual information for perception and action is supported by studies about visual illusions, which showed that context information influences overt judgment but not reaching attempts. The objection was raised, however, that these two types of performance are not directly comparable, since they generally focus on different properties of the visual input The goal of the present study was to quantify the influence of context information (in the form of a textured background) on the cognitive and sensorimotor processing of egocentric distance. We found that the subjective area comprising reachable objects (probed with a cognitive task) decreased, whereas the amplitude of reaching movement (probed with a sensorimotor task) increased in the presence of the textured background with both binocular and monocular viewing. Directional motor performance was not affected by the experimental conditions, but there was a tendency for the kinematic parameters to mimic trajectory variations. The similar but opposite effects of the textured background in the cognitive and sensorimotor tasks suggested that in both tasks the visual targets were perceived as closer when they were presented in a sparse environment A common explanation for the opposite effects was confirmed by the percentage of background influence, which was highly correlated in the two tasks. We conclude that visual processing for perception and action cannot be dissociated from context influence, since it does not differ when the tasks entail the processing of similar spatial characteristics. Copyright 2006 Psychonomic Society, Inc.