Micro-affordances in visual mental imagery and visual short-term memory

Abstract

Micro-affordance effects have been reported for several different components of the reachto- grasp action during on-line visual processing (Tucker and Ellis, 1998; Ellis and Tucker, 2000; and Tucker and Ellis, 2001). One property of these effects is that they have been shown to terminate once an object is removed from view (Tucker and Ellis, 2001). This thesis describes eight experiments that examine the presence of micro-affordance effects during off-line visual processing. All eight experiments employ a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm. Three different experimental designs were employed to examine the presence of micro-affordance effects arising from the relationship between: (a) the power and precision component of the reach-to-grasp action and the compatibility of an object for grasping with either a power or precision grasp, and (b) the orientation of an object for grasping and hand of response. The results of the experimentss uggestt hat: (a) the representationsu tilised during off-line visual processing can potentiate actions arising from the two components of the reach-tograsp action investigated;( b) the representationsu tilised during off-line visual processing can also inhibit micro-affordance effects; (c) main effects of object orientation (faster response times to either left or right-oriented objects) in those experiments examining the relationship between the orientation of an object for grasping and hand of response can be used to support a theory for the existenceo f prototype object representationsh, eld in long term memory, for the process of object recognition, and (d) due to differences in the object properties thought to give rise to micro-affordance effects, and the existence of different off-line visual processes,d ifferent experimentald esignsa re required to elicit microaffordance effects arising from the two types of micro-affordance effects investigated in this thesis.