Semantic category interference effects upon the reach-to-grasp movement

In the present study the kinematics of the reach-to-grasp movement towards a targetobject in the presence of distractors was investigated. Three experiments were conducted. In thefirst experiment, there were three conditions, (a) the target alone, (b) the target presented with adistractor object that was semantically similar to the target and (c) the target presented with adistractor object that was semantically different from the target. The same conditions wererepeated for the second experiment but the size of the distractors were also manipulated. For thethird experiment the target was presented with a distractor object that was semantically differentfrom the target but similar in shape. In the first experiment interference effects were observed inkinematic parameters of the grasp, but not for the reach component when the target and thedistractor were semantically different. In the second and the third experiment, similar resultswere found. Results are discussed in terms of conflicting processing between objects pertainingto different semantic categories.