Replicability, Response Bias, and Judgments, Oh My! A New Checklist for Evaluating the Perceptual Nature of Action-Specific Effects

According to the action-specific account of perception, people perceive the spatial layout of the environment relative to their abilities to act. Moving objects appear slower when they are easier to catch, and hills appear steeper when they are harder to climb. Action-specific effects have been documented in a wide variety of contexts reflecting multiple types of action influences from energetics to performance to affordances. However, there have also been numerous challenges as to whether action-specific effects are genuinely perceptual. Because action-specific effects are measured using perceptual judgments, it is unknown whether action influences perception itself or the judgments used to assess perception. Several strategies have been employed and many more suggested. Here, I provide a checklist that is intended to be a comprehensive list of these strategies as they can be applied to action-specific research. I describe the nuances of these various strategies, and I illustrate how the checklist can be used to both evaluate current action-specific effects as well as to motivate future research to provide further clarity on this important theoretical issue. At least one action-specific effect meets the criteria necessary to be deemed genuinely perceptual.