Selective Influences of Precision and Power Grips on Speech Categorization

<div><p>Recent studies have shown that articulatory gestures are systematically associated with specific manual grip actions. Here we show that executing such actions can influence performance on a speech-categorization task. Participants watched and/or listened to speech stimuli while executing either a power or a precision grip. Grip performance influenced the syllable categorization by increasing the proportion of responses of the syllable congruent with the executed grip (power grip—[ke] and precision grip—[te]). Two follow-up experiments indicated that the effect was based on action-induced bias in selecting the syllable.</p>