Action influences unconscious visual processing

Abstract

It has long been known that action is tightly linked to visual perception. In support of this connection, recent studies have shown that making a simple action towards a visual object can bias subsequent visual processing of features of the acted-on object. The present study examined whether conscious awareness of the acted-on object is necessary to yield this action effect. In two experiments, we found that making an action towards an invisible object resulted in greater priming in a subsequent visual search task. This shows that conscious awareness is not necessary to obtain the action-induced visual bias. More importantly, the result implies that action might amplify the sensory signal from the subliminally presented object, which is presumed to occur during early visual processing.