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A spatially oriented decision does not induce consciousness in a motor task

B Bridgeman1, V Huemer

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz 95064, USA. bruceb@cats.ucsc.edu

Consciousness and Cognition
|October 27, 1998
PubMed
Summary

Making a spatial decision does not engage the cognitive visual system. Even when choosing between targets, visually guided actions remain unconscious and unaffected by visual illusions, showing sensorimotor dominance.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Visual Perception

Background:

  • The human visual system comprises distinct pathways: a cognitive 'what' pathway for perception and a sensorimotor 'how' pathway for visually guided actions.
  • The sensorimotor system typically operates unconsciously and is less susceptible to visual illusions compared to the cognitive system.
  • Context-induced illusions demonstrate the cognitive system's susceptibility to visual direction biases.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether making a spatially based decision forces engagement of the cognitive visual system for spatial tasks.
  • To determine if explicit choice-making influences the visual information used in sensorimotor tasks.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized an isomorphic task where target position directly mapped to motor response.

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  • Employed a forced-choice paradigm where participants decided between two targets ('X' or 'O') based on auditory cues.
  • Assessed whether visually guided motor responses (jabbing) were influenced by surrounding contextual frames, a known source of visual illusions.

    • Main Results:

    • Participants made a decision about which target to contact based on auditory cues.
    • Despite the decision-making process, the motor response (jab) was not affected by the position of a surrounding frame.
    • This indicates that the choice was processed within the context-insensitive sensorimotor system.

    Conclusions:

    • The act of making a spatial decision, even when explicit, does not necessarily recruit the cognitive visual system for guiding behavior.
    • Visually guided actions, when based on simple choices, can be executed by the sensorimotor system without being influenced by visual context or illusions.
    • Suggests that the sensorimotor system can handle choice-related information independently of cognitive processing influenced by visual context.