Effects of saccades and response type on the Simon effect: If you look at the stimulus, the Simon effect may be gone

Abstract

The Simon effect has most often been investigated with key-press responses and eye fixation. In the present study, we asked how the type of eye movement and the type of manual response affect response selection in a Simon task. We investigated three eye movement instructions (spontaneous, saccade, and fixation) while participants performed goal-directed (i.e., reaching) or symbolic (i.e., finger-lift) responses. Initially, no oculomotor constraints were imposed, and a Simon effect was present for both response types. Next, eye movements were constrained. Participants had to either make a saccade toward the stimulus or maintain gaze fixed in the screen centre. While a congruency effect was always observed in reaching responses, it disappeared in finger-lift responses. We suggest that the redirection of saccades from the stimulus to the correct response location in noncorresponding trials contributes to the Simon effect. Because of eye–hand coupling, this occurred in a mandatory manner with reaching responses but not with finger-lift responses. Thus, the Simon effect with key-presses disappears when participants do what they typically do—look at the stimulus.

Keywords:

• Simon effect
• Saccades
• Attention
• Reaching movements
• Symbolic responses

Acknowledgments

D. Kerzel was supported by the Swiss National Foundation (SNF 10011–107768/1 and PDFM1–114417/1).

Notes

¹ A further experiment was run to consider potential differences between the current symbolic finger-lift responses from more typical key-press responses. The apparatus and the stimuli were the same as those in the unconstrained condition of the present study with the exception that eye movements were not measured. Finger-lift and key-press responses were performed on the screen, about 6 cm below the lateralized boxes. The results indicated that reaction times and the mean Simon effect were similar in finger-lift and key-press responses: mean reaction times, 424 and 416 ms, F(1, 9) = 0.28, MSE = 2,140.79, p = .61; mean Simon effect, 19 and 15 ms, F(1, 9) = 0.37, MSE = 132.84, p = .56.