The different effects of breaking an object at different time points.

Abstract

Whether the Object-based Correspondence Effect caused by task-irrelevant handles of graspable objects is attributed to the spatial-based or motor-based accounts, or both, has been controversial thus far. In this study, we investigated this question from the time dynamic perspective with the modified stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility paradigm. Specifically, we used three different types of objects in three behavioral experiments: objects with a handle, symmetrical objects, and objects with unilateral protrusion. The objects were broken or remained intact at three different time points (i.e., 50 ms, 150 ms, and 250 ms). The results showed that the object with an intact handle had the correspondence effect at 150 ms, while the correspondence effect disappeared when the handle was broken (Experiment 1). However, no similar pattern was found for symmetric objects (Experiment 2) and objects with unilateral protrusion (Experiment 3). Meanwhile, similar compatibility effects were found in all three experiments when the breakage occurred at 50 ms, which suggests that spatial-based, attention-related factors play a key role in early visual information representation. Our findings suggest that both early spatial-based and later motor-based mechanisms are necessary for the object-based correspondence effect, corroborating the development of visual information representation over time.