Influence of the Poggendorff Illusion on Manual Pointing

Abstract

The results of recent studies indicate that certain visuomotor actions, such as grasping and pointing, are unaffected by visual size illusions. The present study investigated whether the Poggendorff illusion of alignment influences pointing to a target's location. 15 subjects pointed with their unseen hands to the apparent location of the extension of the oblique line onto the target line of a version of the Poggendorff illusion. Analysis indicated the pointing action was influenced by the Poggendorff illusion. The implications of this finding for the claim that different cortical streams of visual processing subserve visuomotor actions and conscious visual perception are discussed.