Flowers and spiders in spatial stimulus-response compatibility: does affective valence influence selection of task-sets or selection of responses?

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the effect of stimulus valence on two levels of selection in the cognitive system, selection of a task-set and selection of a response. In the first experiment, participants performed a spatial compatibility task (pressing left and right keys according to the locations of stimuli) in which stimulus-response mappings were determined by stimulus valence. There was a standard spatial stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect for positive stimuli (flowers) and a reversed SRC effect for negative stimuli (spiders), but the same data could be interpreted as showing faster responses when positive and negative stimuli were assigned to compatible and incompatible mappings, respectively, than when the assignment was opposite. Experiment 2 disentangled these interpretations, showing that valence did not influence a spatial SRC effect (Simon effect) when task-set retrieval was unnecessary. Experiments 3 and 4 replaced keypress responses with joystick deflections that afforded approach/avoidance action coding. Stimulus valence modulated the Simon effect (but did not reverse it) when the valence was task-relevant (Experiment 3) as well as when it was task-irrelevant (Experiment 4). Therefore, stimulus valence influences task-set selection and response selection, but the influence on the latter is limited to conditions where responses afford approach/avoidance action coding.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective valence
• stimulus-response compatibility
• response selection
• task-set retrieval
• hierarchical control

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Steven Archuleta, Crystal Armendariz, Berenice Cuevas, Akuadasuo Ezenyilimba, and Crystal Hernandez for their help in data collection. The raw data and the experimental stimuli used in the present study can be retrieved from the project page in the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/nvrx3/).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Motonori Yamaguchi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8405-9741

Notes

1 For all four experiments, all factors were within-subject variables. To attain statistical power of at least .80 with a medium effect size, each experiment required a sample size of 34.

2 In addition to these main analyses, we have also analysed the results by including an additional factor, Mapping Order, which are reported in Appendix B.

3 See Appendix B for supplemental analyses including S-R mapping.

4 See Appendix B for supplemental analyses comparing Experiments 3 and 4.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (grant number 1566173).