* Corresponding author:

2 A variety of studies showed that participants are facilitated when responding to graspable objects, while it has not been fully investigated what happens during interactions with graspable objects that are potentially dangerous. The present study focuses on the mechanisms underlying the processing of dangerous objects. In two experiments we adopted a paradigm that has never been employed in this context, a bisection task. The line was flanked by objects belonging to different categories. We explored the sensitivity to the distinction between neutral and dangerous objects, by measuring whether the performance was biased toward a specific object category. In Experiment 1 both teenagers and adults bisected lines flanked by dangerous and neutral graspable objects, and they misperceived the line midpoint toward the neutral graspable object or, stated differently, on the opposite side of the dangerous graspable object. In Experiment 2 adults bisected lines flanked by dangerous and neutral objects matched on graspability (both graspable or ungraspable, Experiment 2a), or by graspable and ungraspabl