Traditional response interference effects from anticipated action outcomes: a response-effect compatibility paradigm

An act as simple as pressing a button involves various stages of processing. Each stage of action production is susceptible to interference from competing representations/processes. For example, in the Simon Effect, interference arises from an incongruence between incidental spatial information and the spatial properties of intended action; in the flanker task, interference arises when visual targets and distracters are associated with different responses (response interference [RI]). Less interference arises in the flanker task when targets and distracters are different in appearance but associated with the same response (perceptual interference [PI]). Interference also stems from the automatic activation of representations associated with the anticipated effects of an action, response-effect (R–E) compatibility (e.g., the presence of a left-pointing arrow after one presses a button on the right will increase interference in future trials). This has been explained by ideomotor theory—that the mental representation of anticipated action-effects are activated automatically by voluntary action and that such representations can cause facilitation or interference by automatically priming their associated action plans. To illuminate the nature of action production and provide additional support for ideomotor theory, we examined for the first time the effects of PI and RI in a new R–E compatibility paradigm.