Effects of visual cue and response assignment on spatial stimulus coding in stimulus–response compatibility

Abstract

Tlauka and McKenna (2000) reported a reversal of the traditional stimulus–response compatibility (SRC) effect (faster responding to a stimulus presented on the same side than to one on the opposite side) when the stimulus appearing on one side of a display is a member of a superordinate unit that is largely on the opposite side. We investigated the effects of a visual cue that explicitly shows a superordinate unit, and of assignment of multiple stimuli within each superordinate unit to one response, on the SRC effect based on superordinate unit position. Three experiments revealed that stimulus–response assignment is critical, while the visual cue plays a minor role, in eliciting the SRC effect based on the superordinate unit position. Findings suggest bidirectional interaction between perception and action and simultaneous spatial stimulus coding according to multiple frames of reference, with contribution of each coding to the SRC effect flexibly varying with task situations.

Keywords:

• Stimulus–response compatibility
• Spatial coding
• Stimulus grouping
• Response selection
• Perception and action

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Ines Jentzsch and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments. This study was supported by a grant from the Research Fellowships of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists to A.N. and by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science awarded to K.Y. Akio Nishimura is now at Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan, as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Research Fellow.

Notes

¹ Hereafter, when mentioned in the present manuscript, “Figure(s)” refer to the figure(s) in the present article, not to the figures in the cited articles.

² In the present study, the individual stimulus position could be coded relative to several frames of reference, as is indicated in the previous findings (e.g., Lamberts et al., 1992). However, the aim of the present study is to examine the priority order of spatial coding of the superordinate unit position and of the individual stimulus position. Therefore we do not discriminate among, or strictly discuss, these frames of reference for spatial coding of individual stimulus position in the present study.

³ There was a speed–accuracy trade-off between Experiments 2 and 3: RT was shorter, but the error rate was higher in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 3. One aim of Experiment 3 was to elevate the overall RT level to a level comparable to that of Experiment 1, but in a paradigm lacking many-to-one stimulus–response mapping, because the passage of time from the onset of the target might have been responsible for the difference of the SRC effects between Experiments 1 and 2. From this perspective, we regard the overall RT level as an index of the passage of time from the onset of the target, not as an index of performance or task difficulty. Thus we exclusively focused on the RT level and disregarded an integrated task performance to which both the speed and the accuracy were related. Therefore we are certain that the speed–accuracy trade-off is not detrimental to our claim.