Visuomotor compatibility effects and the size coding

This talk aim to report my recent works on the very nature of the neurocognitive processes underlying visuomotor compatibility effect observed with graspable objects. Two major theoretical accounts have been developed during the recent years. The first, called the motor-simulation account, assumes that the mere perception of graspable objects would automatically induce the simulation of the motor properties of the actions usually performed with the target objects. This motor simulation would in turn facilitate a response with the similar properties. A challenging account, called the coding account, instead argues that this kind of compatibility effect would be due to a compatibility/incompatibility of “abstract” spatial codes associated to the objects and to the responses. I will focus my presentation of one peculiar visuomotor compatibility effect observed with graspable objects, and I will synthesize various behavioral experiments supporting a specific version of the coding account: the size coding account. I will particularly emphasize the methods used to disentangle between both accounts. Based on these growing number of data, I will then sketch the possible processes at work as well as the major contributions and limits of these works.