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.
Keywords: Action and perception; Semantic priming; Visual search.