Intentional control of attention: action planning primes action-related stimulus dimensions

One might wonder how our prediction that action planning facilitates perceptual processing fits with previous observations of action-induced blindness, that is, the finding that preparing a left- or right-hand action impairs the processing of a spatially compatible stimulus, such as a left- or right-pointing arrow (Müsseler & Hommel, 1997). The explanation is central for our present argument: We assume that planning an action binds the codes that represent this action’s features, which occupies these particular codes and makes them less available for other purposes like coding a perceptual event (the blindness effect; see Hommel & Müsseler, 2005). That is, occupying a code primes it and prevents it not from being further activated by other events, but it does prevent it (to some degree) from being bound with other features and to other representations. The new assumption we make here is that planning an action may not only activate the relevant feature codes but may also prime whole feature dimensions, such as size or shape in the case of grasping and location in the case of pointing. If true this would mean that any feature on the primed dimension would benefit from preparing a particular action. But please note that whether this benefit turns into a measurable behavioral advantage always depends on whether the particular feature is already bound to another event or not (Hommel, 2004)