title: Action representations activated by task-irrelevant information: is it really irrelevant?
abstract: Accessing action knowledge is believed to rely on the activation of action representations through the retrieval of functional, manipulative, and spatial information associated with objects. However, it remains unclear whether action representations can be activated in this way when the object information is irrelevant to the current judgment. The present study investigated this question by independently manipulating the correctness of three types of action-related information: the functional relation between the two objects, the grip applied to the objects, and the orientation of the objects. In each of three tasks in Experiment 1, participants evaluated the correctness of only one of the three information types (function, grip or orientation). Similar results were achieved with all three tasks: "correct" judgments were facilitated when the other dimensions were correct; however, "incorrect" judgments were facilitated when the other two dimensions were both correct and also when they were both incorrect. In Experiment 2, when participants attended to an action-irrelevant feature (object color), there was no interaction between function, grip, and orientation. These results clearly indicate that action representations can be activated by retrieval of functional, manipulative, and spatial knowledge about objects, even though this is task-irrelevant information.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China; Shaanxi Provincial Key Laboratory of Behavior & Cognitive Neuroscience, Xi'an, China.
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.forename: Yonghui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D018737:Hand Strength / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D019359:Knowledge; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Action representations; action feature; action understanding