Visual processing for action resists similarity of relevant and irrelevant object features.

It has been suggested that the human brain processes visual information in different manners, depending on whether the information is used for perception or for action control. This distinction has been criticized for the lack of behavioral dissociations that unambiguously support the proposed two-visual-pathways model. Here we present a new and simple dissociation between vision for perception and vision for action: Perceptual judgments are affected by the similarity of relevant and irrelevant stimulus features, while object-oriented actions are not. This dissociation overcomes the methodological problems of previously proposed differences in terms of vulnerability to visual illusions or to variability in irrelevant object features, and it can also serve as an easily applicable behavioral indicator of underlying processing modes.