Objects rarely appear in isolation in natural scenes. Although many studies have investigated how nearby objects influence perception in cluttered scenes (i.e., crowding), none has studied how nearby objects influence visually guided action. In Experiment 1, we found that participants could scale their grasp to the size of a crowded target even when they could not perceive its size, demonstrating for the first time that neurologically intact participants can use visual information that is not available to conscious report to scale their grasp to real objects in real scenes. In Experiments 2 and 3, we found that changing the eccentricity of the display and the orientation of the flankers had no effect on grasping but strongly affected perception. The differential effects of eccentricity and flanker orientation on perception and grasping show that the known differences in retinotopy between the ventral and dorsal streams are reflected in the way in which people deal with targets in cluttered scenes.
AgliotiS.DeSouzaJ. F. X.GoodaleM. A. (1995). Size-contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand. Current Biology, 5, 679–685. doi:10.1016/S0960-9822(95)00133-3
2.
BaselerH. A.MorlandA. B.WandellB. A. (1999). Topographic organization of human visual areas in the absence of input from primary cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience, 19, 2619–2627.
3.
BinstedG.BrownellK.VorontsovaZ.HeathM.SaucierD. (2007). Visuomotor system uses target features unavailable to conscious awareness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 104, 12669–12672. doi:10.1073/pnas.0702307104
ChapmanC. S.GallivanJ. P.CulhamJ. C.GoodaleM. A. (2011). Mental blocks: fMRI reveals top-down modulation of early visual cortex when obstacles interfere with grasp planning. Neuropsychologia, 49, 1703–1717. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.048
6.
ChenJ.HeY.ZhuZ.ZhouT.PengY.ZhangX.FangF. (2014). Attention-dependent early cortical suppression contributes to crowding. The Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 10465–10474. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.1140-14.2014
7.
ColbyC. L.GattassR.OlsonC. R.GrossC. G. (1988). Topographical organization of cortical afferents to extrastriate visual area PO in the macaque: A dual tracer study. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 269, 392–413. doi:10.1002/cne.902690307
8.
FangF.HeS. (2005). Cortical responses to invisible objects in the human dorsal and ventral pathways. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 1380–1385. doi:10.1038/nn1537
9.
FattoriP.BreveglieriR.AmorosoK.GallettiC. (2004). Evidence for both reaching and grasping activity in the medial parieto-occipital cortex of the macaque. European Journal of Neuroscience, 20, 2457–2466. doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2004.03697.x
10.
FisherR. A. (1915). Frequency distribution of the values of the correlation coefficient in samples from an indefinitely large population. Biometrika, 10, 507–521. doi:10.2307/2331838
11.
FisherR. A. (1921). On the probable error of a coefficient of correlation deduced from a small sample. Metron, 1, 3–32.
12.
GallettiC.FattoriP.KutzD. F.GamberiniM. (1999). Brain location and visual topography of cortical area V6A in the macaque monkey. European Journal of Neuroscience, 11, 575–582. doi:10.1046/j.1460-9568.1999.00467.x
13.
GallettiC.KutzD.GamberiniM.BreveglieriR.FattoriP. (2003). Role of the medial parieto-occipital cortex in the control of reaching and grasping movements. Experimental Brain Research, 153, 158–170. doi:10.1007/s00221-003-1589-z
14.
GanelT.GoodaleM. A. (2003). Visual control of action but not perception requires analytical processing of object shape. Nature, 426, 664–667. doi:10.1038/nature02156
15.
GanelT.TanzerM.GoodaleM. A. (2008). A double dissociation between action and perception in the context of visual illusions: Opposite effects of real and illusory size. Psychological Science, 19, 221–225. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02071.x
16.
GirardP.BullierJ. (1989). Visual activity in area V2 during reversible inactivation of area 17 in the macaque monkey. Journal of Neurophysiology, 62, 1287–1302.
17.
GirardP.SalinP.BullierJ. (1991a). Visual activity in areas V3a and V3 during reversible inactivation of area V1 in the macaque monkey. Journal of Neurophysiology, 66, 1493–1503.
18.
GirardP.SalinP.BullierJ. (1991b). Visual activity in macaque area V4 depends on area 17 input. NeuroReport, 2, 81–84.
19.
GoodaleM. A. (2011). Transforming vision into action. Vision Research, 51, 1567–1587. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2010.07.027
20.
GoodaleM. A.MilnerA. D. (1992). Separate visual pathways for perception and action. Trends in Neurosciences, 15, 20–25. doi:10.1016/0166-2236(92)90344-8
21.
HaffendenA. M.GoodaleM. A. (1998). The effect of pictorial illusion on prehension and perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 10, 122–136. doi:10.1162/089892998563824
22.
HeS.CavanaghP.IntriligatorJ. (1996). Attentional resolution and the locus of visual awareness. Nature, 383, 334–337.
23.
JeannerodM. (1986). Mechanisms of visuomotor coordination: A study in normal and brain-damaged subjects. Neuro psychologia, 24, 41–78. doi:10.1016/0028-3932(86)90042-4
24.
LeviD. M. (2008). Crowding—an essential bottleneck for object recognition: A mini-review. Vision Research, 48, 635–654.
25.
LeviD. M.CarneyT. (2009). Crowding in peripheral vision: Why bigger is better. Current Biology, 19, 1988–1993.
26.
LeviD. M.KleinS. A.AitsebaomoA. P. (1985). Vernier acuity, crowding and cortical magnification. Vision Research, 25, 963–977.
27.
LiuT.JiangY.SunX.HeS. (2009). Reduction of the crowding effect in spatially adjacent but cortically remote visual stimuli. Current Biology, 19, 127–132.
28.
MalachR.LevyI.HassonU. (2002). The topography of high-order human object areas. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 176–184. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(02)01870-3
29.
MartelliM.MajajN. J.PelliD. G. (2005). Are faces processed like words? A diagnostic test for recognition by parts. Journal of Vision, 5(1), Article 6. Retrieved from http://www.journalofvision.org/content/5/1/6.full
30.
MassonM. E.LoftusG. R. (2003). Using confidence intervals for graphically based data interpretation. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale, 57, 203–220.
31.
MilnerA. D.GoodaleM. A. (2006). The visual brain in action. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
32.
ParkesL.LundJ.AngelucciA.SolomonJ. A.MorganM. (2001). Compulsory averaging of crowded orientation signals in human vision. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 739–744.
33.
PelliD. G.PalomaresM.MajajN. J. (2004). Crowding is unlike ordinary masking: Distinguishing feature integration from detection. Journal of Vision, 4(12), Article 12. Retrieved from http://www.journalofvision.org/content/4/12/12.full
34.
PitzalisS.GallettiC.HuangR.-S.PatriaF.CommitteriG.GalatiG.. . . SerenoM. I. (2006). Wide-field retinotopy defines human cortical visual area V6. The Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 7962–7973. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0178-06.2006
35.
Rocha-MirandaC. E.BenderD. B.GrossC. G.MishkinM. (1975). Visual activation of neurons in inferotemporal cortex depends on striate cortex and forebrain commissures. Journal of Neurophysiology, 38, 475–491.
36.
RoseboomW.ArnoldD. H. (2011). Learning to reach for ‘invisible’ visual input. Current Biology, 21, R493–R494. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2011.05.036
37.
SincichL. C.ParkK. F.WohlgemuthM. J.HortonJ. C. (2004). Bypassing V1: A direct geniculate input to area MT. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 1123–1128.
38.
ToetA.LeviD. M. (1992). The two-dimensional shape of spatial interaction zones in the parafovea. Vision Research, 32, 1349–1357.
39.
VoudourisD.SmeetsJ.BrennerE. (2012). Do obstacles affect the selection of grasping points?Human Movement Science, 31, 1090–1102.
40.
WhitneyD.LeviD. M. (2011). Visual crowding: A fundamental limit on conscious perception and object recognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 160–168.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
