| The relationship between visual perception and action is a central issue in the cognitive sciences. As with any type of highly skilled behavior, the integrated operation of cognitive, sensory and motor systems is crucial for our understanding of the representation of visual objects for the sake of disparate tasks. A functional distinction that has a bearing on this issue is the dissociation between vision for conscious identification and vision for action. The ventral pathway, projecting from the primary visual cortex to the inferotemporal lobe is primarily associated with object recognition or pattern discrimination (i.e. conscious identification). The dorsal pathway, running from the primary visual cortex to the posterial parietal cortex, in contrast, is primarily involved in guiding the control of object-oriented action (i.e. vision for action). The main finding from the literature is that the cognitive system is more susceptible to such illusions than the sensorimotor system. This entire research tradition, however, has focused on non-social, affectively neutral stimuli with cognitive tasks and instrumental actions that are driven by neutral goals. From neurobiology, however, it is known that both cognition and action are affected by emotions. Moreover, the situation in which an action takes place is, almost always, a social situation. The thrust of the present project is therefore to broaden the scope of the research on perception and action by explicitly including considerations and manipulations of a social-affective nature. |
