Look where you're going! Perceptual attention constrains the online guidance of action

Action guidance, like perceptual discrimination, requires selective attention. Perception is enhanced at the target of a reaching movement, but it is not known whether selecting an object for perception reciprocally prioritises it for action. Two theoretical frameworks, the premotor theory and the Visual Attention Model, predict that this reciprocal relation should hold. We tested the influence of perceptual attention on the online control of reaching. In Experiment 1, participants attended covertly to a flanker on one or other side of a fixated target, prior to reaching for that target, which occasionally jumped, after reach onset, to the attended or non-attended side. Participants corrected their reaches for almost all target jumps. In Experiment 2, we required covert monitoring of the flanker during reaching. This concurrent perceptual task globally reduced correction behaviour, indicating that perception and action share a common attentional resource. Corrections were especially unlikely toward the attended side. This is explained by assuming that perceptual attention primed an action toward the attended location and that the participant inhibited this primed action. The data thus imply that perceptual selection constrains online action guidance, as predicted by the premotor theory and the VAM. We further argue that the fact that participants can inhibit a location within the action system but simultaneously maintain its prioritisation for perceptual monitoring, is easier to reconcile with the VAM than with the premotor theory.