Attention directs actions in visual foraging

Visual foraging tasks, where participants collect items by touching or clicking on them, have become popular for investigating visual search. They probe selective attention in multi-target contexts through naturalistic goal-directed actions, unlike the button presses used in many other paradigms. Despite their potential, such tasks had not been used to examine the interplay of attention and goal-directed actions until now, even though this topic has been extensively studied with other paradigms and has significant implications for understanding human visual behavior in the real world. In this study, we applied the visual foraging paradigm to address this gap. We found that attentional prioritization of one part in a two-part compound object is accompanied by a motor bias in the collecting action (stylus tap) toward the prioritized part. This bias combines with motor precision demands, such as aiming for stable contact points. Our findings show that action planning not only modulates the attentional landscape at large but also that attentional asymmetries (e.g., prioritizing one object part) feed back into the motor system, combining with motoric factors to refine goal-directed actions.