Direct and Indirect Effects of Action on Object Classification

We report three experiments in which name verification responses to either objects (Experiments 1 and 2) or hand movements (Experiment 3) were compared withaction decisions, where participants verified whether an object is typically used in the way described by a verbal label. In Experiments 1 and 2, we report that action decisions show more consistent and larger effects of the congruency of either a handgrip or a type of movement than do name verification responses, although there was some effect of the congruency of the handgrip on name verification. In Experiment 3, we demonstrate that the congruency of the object being moved affects both action and name verification responses to hand movements. We discuss the data relative to accounts of how actions and names are accessed by visually presented objects and in relation to work on the information called upon in classification tasks.