Simple actions activate semantic associations

Blaire J. Weidler, Richard A. Abrams

It is well known that words can prime the identification of related pictures. But how are these connections between words and their visual representations prioritized? Here we show that action modulates word-picture priming. Participants in three experiments either did nothing or made a simple, arbitrary action (a keypress) while reading a word. Next, they searched for a target that was superimposed on one of several images. In some trials, the target was on an image that represented the previously seen word; in other trials, that image contained a distractor. The word primed the picture during visual search, such that targets on that (task-irrelevant) image were found more quickly. Importantly, the magnitude of this word-picture priming was greater if participants had made an action while reading the word. These results are the first to implicate action as a factor that can modulate word-picture associations, and they show that the effects of action on perception are more profound than has previously been believed: Elements that share only semantic (but not sensory) overlap with acted-on objects receive attentional priority.