Cite as:
Weiß K, Scharlau I, 2011, "Motor priming in unspeeded temporal order judgments: Evidence from a visual prior entry paradigm" Perception 40 ECVP Abstract Supplement, page 100

Motor priming in unspeeded temporal order judgments: Evidence from a visual prior entry paradigm

K Weiß, I Scharlau

An attended stimulus is perceived earlier than an unattended stimulus. Thus, the perceptual latency of an attended stimulus is shortened. This phenomenon is called prior entry. A variety of experimental tasks can be used for assessing latency differences, eg reaction times, temporal order judgments (TOJs) or simultaneity judgments. Unlike reaction times, perceptual latencies assessed by unspeeded judgment tasks, as TOJs, should be free from processes involved in preparation and execution of motor responses. Therefore they might provide a more accurate measure of perceptual latencies. Challenging this assumption we provide evidence for a small but substantial amount of motor priming in TOJs. Prior entry is larger if attention is directed by invisible primes which specify the same motor response as the target compared to primes which specify the alternative motor response. This effect disappeared when the motor response was delayed, which is in accordance with motor preparation. These results question the assumption that TOJs provide necessarily a purer measure of latency advantages than speeded tasks, since they are—at least by a small amount—susceptible to motor priming.

These web-based abstracts are provided for ease of seaching and access, but certain aspects (such as as mathematics) may not appear in their optimum form. For the final published version of this abstract, please see
ECVP 2011 Abstract Supplement (complete) size: 2206 Kb

[Publisher's note: The abstracts in this year's ECVP supplement have been published with virtually no copy editing by Pion, thus the standards of grammar and style may not match those of regular Perception articles.]