Rapid communication: Perceptual strength is different from sensorimotor strength: Evidence from the centre–periphery asymmetry in masked priming

Near-threshold prime stimuli can facilitate or hinder responses to target stimuli, creating either a positive compatibility effect (PCE) or a negative compatibility effect (NCE). An asymmetry has been reported between primes presented in near periphery, which produced a PCE, and foveal primes, which produced an NCE under comparable conditions. This asymmetry has been attributed to the difference in retinal sensitivity, but it remains unclear whether this means that equating discrimination performance for primes in fovea and periphery, in order to account for differences in perceptual sensitivity, would make the priming effects the same. Wider work indicates that perceptual ability can dissociate from visuomotor effects, predicting that equating perceptual ability for fovea and periphery would not equate priming. We tested these opposite possibilities by matching discrimination performance for masked Gabor patches in fovea and near periphery (6°) and using these as primes in a masked priming paradigm expected to elicit NCEs. We found the asymmetry remained: NCE for fovea and PCE for periphery. We replicated this with both blocked and randomized procedures to check for attentional effects. We conclude that equating perceptual strength (discriminability) of stimuli does not equate their sensorimotor impact due to differences in the relative importance of different visual pathways and differing temporal dynamics in perceptual and sensorimotor processes.