Transfer of response codes from choice-response to go/no-go tasks

The present study investigated the conditions for observing the Simon effect in go/no-go tasks. The Simon effect denotes faster and more accurate responses when irrelevant stimulus location and response location correspond than when they do not correspond. In four experiments, participants performed both in a choice-response task (CRT) and in a go/no-go task, and we varied the order and the similarity of the tasks. In the CRT, participants pressed a left key to one stimulus colour and a right key to another stimulus colour; in the go/no-go task, participants pressed one (e.g., left) key to one stimulus colour and refrained from responding to the other stimulus colour. As expected, Simon effects were consistently observed in the CRT. In contrast, Simon effects in the go/no-go task were only observed when it followed the CRT and when the mapping of stimulus colours to response locations was preserved between tasks (i.e., in Experiment 4). Results suggest that transfer of a particular S–R rule including response location from the CRT to the go/no-go task was responsible for the Simon effect in the latter task. In general, results are consistent with a response-discrimination account of the Simon effect.     

Selective attention to the color and direction of moving stimuli: Electrophysiological correlates of hierarchical feature selection

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from subjects who attended to pairs of adjacent colored squares that were flashed sequentially to produce a perception of movement. The task was to attend selectively to stimuli in one visual field and to detect slower moving targets that contained the critical value of the attended feature, be it color or movement direction. Attention to location was reflected by a modulation of the early P1 and N1 components of the ERP, whereas selection of the relevant stimulus feature was associated with later selection negativity components. ERP indices of feature selection were elicited only by stimuli at the attended location and had distinctive scalp distributions for features mediated by “ventral” (color) and “dorsal” (motion) cortical areas. ERP indices of target selection were also contingent on the prior selection of location but initially did not depend on the selection of the relevant feature. These ERP data reveal the timing of sequential, parallel, and contingent stages of visual processing and support early-selection theories of attention that stipulate attentional control over the initial processing of stimulus features.     

Perceptual and attentional factors in encoding irrelevant spatial information

Numerous studies found superior performance when the irrelevant location of a stimulus and response location were corresponding than when they were not corresponding (Simon effect), suggesting that stimulus location is processed in an obligatory manner. The present study compared Simon effects from the location of a relevant (i.e., to-be-attended) object to those from the location of an irrelevant (i.e., to-be-ignored) object. In four experiments, participants were presented with a rectangular frame and a square, with the relevant object in green or red color and the irrelevant object in gray or white color. Participants’ task was to respond with a lateral keypress to the color of the relevant object, and we varied spatial correspondence between the location of the relevant or the irrelevant object and the response, respectively. Results consistently showed larger Simon effects from the location of the relevant than from the irrelevant object, even when the irrelevant object was made very salient. These results suggest that location processing is largely confined to relevant (i.e., attended) objects, stressing the role of attention shifts for location encoding.     

Stimulus-response compatibility effects in go-no-go tasks: a dimensional overlap account

According to the automatic response activation hypothesis of the dimensional overlap (DO) model (Kornblum, Stevens, Whipple, & Requin, 1999), stimulus-response compatibility effects are expected to occur in go-no-go tasks. This prediction is confirmed in two experiments in which subjects moved a hand to one side of the field on presentation of a go stimulus. Although the direction of movement was known in advance and the spatial attribute of the go stimuli was irrelevant to the go-no-go decision, the subjects' response time was shorter when the spatial attribute to the go stimulus corresponded to that of the response than when it did not. These effects are shown to depend on the similarity of the go and the no-go stimuli, as well as on whether the spatial attribute of the go stimuli was its actual location or its meaning. We discuss these results in terms of the temporal dynamics of automatic and controlled response processes, as hypothesized in the DO model.     

The influence of action on visual search: behavioral response toward stimuli modifies the selection process

In five experiments, we investigated how simple actions (as assessed via a go/no-go task) influence visual search. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants responded (go) when a color name (cue) matched a colored shape (prime), and did not respond (no-go) when they mismatched. Participants then searched a visual array for a tilted line, either embedded within the prime (valid prime) or within a different shape of a different color (invalid prime). For go trials, but not for no-go trials, the validity of the prime influenced search behavior so that faster RTs were observed when the prime was valid as compared with when it was invalid. In Experiment 3, the go/no-go task was based on the shape of the prime. The color of the prime, but not the shape, was re-presented in the search array, and its validity produced a similar pattern as in Experiments 1-2. In Experiment 4, participants responded when the color name and prime mismatched. Reaction times indicated that attentional set had an influence on the validity differences in Experiments 1-3. In Experiment 5, the go/no-go task was based on whether a digit matched a digit appearing within the prime. Go trials produced similar validity effects as observed in Experiments 1-3.     

Item-specific congruency effects in nonverbal auditory Stroop

In the current study, participants judged as 'low' or 'high' either the location or the frequency of a single tone presented in one of two locations at one of two frequencies. The classification associated with the irrelevant feature could be either congruent or incongruent with the required response. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that responses were made more slowly on incongruent than on congruent trials, regardless of whether participants judged sounds according to their location or their pitch. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the probability that the classification associated with the irrelevant acoustic feature was consistent with the classification associated with the task-relevant dimension. In this experiment responses were made more quickly on congruent trials when the response associated with the irrelevant feature was likely to be consistent with the required response, and on incongruent trials when the response associated with the irrelevant feature was likely to be inconsistent with the required response.     

Effects of auditory stimulus intensity on response force in simple, go/no-go, and choice RT tasks

In four experiments, increasing the intensities of both relevant and irrelevant auditory stimuli was found to increase response force (RF) in simple, go/no-go, and choice reaction time (RT) tasks. These results raise problems for models that localize the effects of auditory intensity on purely perceptual processes, indicating instead that intensity also affects motor output processes under many circumstances. In Experiment 1, simple RT, go/no-go, and choice RT tasks were compared, using the same stimuli for all tasks. Auditory stimulus intensity affected both RT and RF, and these effects were not modulated by task. In Experiments 2-4, an irrelevant auditory accessory stimulus accompanied a relevant visual stimulus, and the go/no-go and choice tasks were used. The intensity of the irrelevant auditory accessory stimulus was found to affect RT and RF, although the sizes of these effects depended somewhat on the temporal predictability of the accessory stimulus.     

Response retrieval in a go/no-go priming-of-popout task

Priming of popout is the finding that singleton search is faster when features of a target and of nontargets are repeated across trials than when the features switch. Theoretical accounts suggest that intertrial repetition influences perceptual and attentional selection processes, episodic retrieval processes, or both. The present study combined a popout search task with a go/no-go task. In Experiment 1, the nontarget distractors in each display carried the go/no-go feature, and in Experiment 2, the texture of all items carried the go/no-go feature. Results showed that the go/no-go task moderated the intertrial repetition effects. In Experiment 1, the target color elicited retrieval of the preceding distractor color and associated no-go response, resulting in larger interference effects. In Experiment 2, the target color elicited retrieval of the preceding target color and no-go response, resulting in reduced facilitation effects. Additional results from both experiments showed that the colors in a search display also influenced target selection on the following trial. Taken together, the results of both experiments suggest that intertrial repetition influences both early selection and postselection retrieval processes.     

Object-based attentional selection can modulate the Stroop effect

The Stroop (1935) effect is the inability to ignore a color word when the task is to report the ink color of that word (i.e., to say "green" to the word RED in green ink). The present study investigated whether object-based processing contributes to the Stroop effect. According to this view, observers are unable to ignore irrelevant features of an attended object (Kahneman & Henik, 1981). In three experiments, participants had to name the color of one of two superimposed rectangles and to ignore words that appeared in the relevant object, in the irrelevant object, or in the background. The words were congruent, neutral, or incongruent with respect to the correct color response. Words in the irrelevant object and in the background produced significant Stroop effects, consistent with earlier findings. Importantly, however, words in the relevant object produced larger Stroop effects than did the other conditions, suggesting amplified processing of all the features of an attended object. Thus, object-based processing can modulate the Stroop effect.     

Increased spatial salience in the social Simon task: A response-coding account of spatial compatibility effects

A spatial compatibility effect (SCE) is typically observed in forced two-choice tasks in which a spatially defined response (e.g., pressing a left vs. a right key) has to be executed to a nonspatial feature of a stimulus (e.g., discriminating red from green) that is additionally connoted by a spatial feature (e.g., the stimulus points to the left or the right). Responses are faster and more accurate when the response side and the spatial stimulus feature are compatible than when they are incompatible. Previous research has demonstrated that SCEs are diminished when stimuli from only one response category are responded to in individual go/no-go tasks, whereas SCEs reemerge when two participants work jointly on two complementary, individual go/no-go tasks in a joint go/no-go task setting. This social Simon effect has been considered evidence for shared task representations. We show that SCEs emerge in individual go/no-go tasks when the spatial dimension is made more salient, whereas SCEs are eliminated in joint go/no-go tasks when the spatial dimension is made less salient. These findings are consistent with an account of social Simon effects in terms of spatial response coding, whereas they are inconsistent with an account of shared task representations. The relevance of social factors for spatial response coding is discussed.     

Elimination of the enhanced Simon effect for older adults in a three-choice situation: Ageing and the Simon effect in a go/no-go Simon task

In a Simon task, participants show better performance when the irrelevant stimulus location corresponds with the response location than when it does not, and this effect is typically greater for older adults than for younger adults. To study the effect of cognitive ageing in the Simon task, we compared young and old adults using two versions of the Simon task: (a) a standard visual Simon task, for which participants respond with left and right key-presses to the red and green colours of stimuli presented in left and right locations; (b) a go/no-go version of the Simon task, which was basically the same, except that the shape of the stimulus in one third of the trials indicates that no response is to be made. In both tasks, both age groups showed the Simon effect. The magnitude of the effect for the standard Simon task was greater for the older adults than for the younger adults. Nevertheless, the two groups showed an equivalent Simon effect in the go/no-go version of the Simon task. Reaction time distribution analyses revealed basically similar functions for both age groups: a decreasing pattern of the Simon effect in the standard task and an increasing pattern of the effect in the go/no-go version of the task. The results suggest that older adults find it more difficult to suppress an automatic activation of the corresponding response, though this automatic activation was reduced in situations where the response was frequently inhibited.     

Can attentional control settings be maintained for two color–location conjunctions? Evidence from an RSVP task

Previous investigations of the ability to maintain separate attentional control settings for different spatial locations have relied principally on a go/no-go spatial-cueing paradigm. The results have suggested that control of attention is accomplished only late in processing. However, the go/no-go task does not provide strong incentives to withhold attention from irrelevant color–location conjunctions. We used a modified version of the task in which failing to adopt multiple control settings would be detrimental to performance. Two RSVP streams of colored letters appeared to the left and right of fixation. Participants searched for targets that were a conjunction of color and location, so that the target color for one stream acted as a distractor when presented in the opposite stream. Distractors that did not match the target conjunctions nevertheless captured attention and interfered with performance. This was the case even when the target conjunctions were previewed early in the trial prior to the target (Exp. 2). However, distractor interference was reduced when the upcoming distractor was previewed early on in the trial (Exp. 3). Attentional selection of targets by color–location conjunctions may be effective if facilitative attentional sets are accompanied by the top-down inhibition of irrelevant items.     

The influence of visual noise in the binding of irrelevant features to responses

ABSTRACT

In order to efficiently control our actions, stimuli and responses made to them are stored and integrated into event files. This integration is not restricted to relevant stimuli. Even irrelevant stimuli or features that co-occur at responding can be integrated with the response. In the presence of only one irrelevant feature, binding effects for that feature are generally observed. In the presence of more than one irrelevant features, empirical evidence is inconsistent. The present experiments tested feature-response binding effects for irrelevant features when more than one irrelevant feature was present. In two experiments feature-response binding effects for three irrelevant features (colour, shape, and location) were tested in a block-wise manner. In each block one feature was orthogonally varied to the response while the others were held constant (Experiment 1) or always changed (Experiment 2). Significant binding effects were observed for each of three features when the other two were held constant (Exp. 1). However, when the other two features were varied, significant binding effects were only observed for colour and location, but not for shape (Exp. 2). The results suggest that strength of feature-response binding effects is influenced by the variation of simultaneously presented features.     

注意控制定势和线索类型在注意捕获中的作用

采用前线索范式, 通过3个实验考察了注意控制定势和线索类型在注意捕获中的作用。实验1要求被试搜索颜色奇异项目标或突现目标, 涉及较弱的注意控制定势, 结果表明, 突现线索在作为匹配线索和不匹配线索时都能捕获注意, 而颜色奇异项线索只有在作为匹配线索时才能捕获注意。实验2要求被试搜索具体特征的红色或白色目标, 使被试建立较强的特征搜索定势, 结果表明, 颜色奇异项线索和突现线索在作为匹配线索时都能捕获注意, 但是在不匹配条件下, 颜色奇异项线索被抑制了, 而突现线索不能捕获注意; 实验3采取go/no-go范式, 要求被试对红色目标进行反应, 对白色目标进行抑制, 并通过设置不同的线索-目标时间间隔来进一步考察注意捕获的机制, 结果表明, 在600 ms间隔下, no-go突现线索被抑制, 而对于go颜色奇异项线索来说, 随着时间间隔的增加, 注意捕获效应减少。结果与相倚捕获假说和抑制独立捕获假说不符, 支持注意转移假说：自上而下的注意控制定势通过把注意从和目标不匹配的特征位置转移发挥作用; 颜色奇异项线索和突现线索的注意捕获机制相同, 但是突现线索相对于颜色奇异项线索来说, 在与目标不匹配的条件下, 更容易捕获注意, 更难被抑制。     

Feature saliency affects delayed matching of an attended feature

We examined how top-down attentional modulation and bottom-up stimulus saliency interact with feature memory. Experiment 1 used a delayed-matching-to-sample (DMS) task to examine the relative saliency between features by observing the relative accuracy of recognition at different stimulus durations. Feature salience decreased according to the following order: colour, form, and texture. In a modified DMS task (Experiments 2 and 3), participants were required to attend to one of three features and ignore the others. After a delay, they were required to choose which of the two test stimuli matched the reference stimulus on the attended feature, disregarding other task-irrelevant features. The target was either identical to the reference stimulus or mismatched the reference stimulus on one of the irrelevant features. The results showed that colour matching was affected neither by a form change nor by a texture change. Form matching was affected by a colour change, and texture matching was affected by a colour or form change. These results are consistent with the relative saliency hypothesis. Even when all features of an attended object are maintained, a relatively more salient task-irrelevant feature can interfere with the delayed recognition of a less salient feature.     

A Simon effect in memory retrieval: Evidence for the response-discrimination account

According to the traditional view, the effects of irrelevant stimulus location on the selection of a spatial response to a nonspatial stimulus feature (Simon effect) result from long-term associations between spatial stimulus codes and spatially corresponding response codes. According to an alternative view, the response-discrimination account, Simon effects arise from interactions between spatial stimulus codes and response labels in working memory (WM). The latter account predicts Simon effects when participants use spatial labels for response representation in WM, even when the actual responses have no spatial features (e.g., saying the word "plate"). The prediction was tested in an experiment, in which participants first encoded two words at different locations, and then responded to a stimulus by saying the word from the location indicated by stimulus color. The manipulation concerned the correspondence between irrelevant location of the colored stimulus and the retrieval cue for the vocal responses (i.e., word location in the encoding display). A Simon effect in memory retrieval was observed, supporting the response-discrimination account.     

Keys and seats: Spatial response coding underlying the joint spatial compatibility effect

Spatial compatibility effects (SCEs) are typically observed when participants have to execute spatially defined responses to nonspatial stimulus features (e.g., the color red or green) that randomly appear to the left and the right. Whereas a spatial correspondence of stimulus and response features facilitates response execution, a noncorrespondence impairs task performance. Interestingly, the SCE is drastically reduced when a single participant responds to one stimulus feature (e.g., green) by operating only one response key (individual go/no-go task), whereas a full-blown SCE is observed when the task is distributed between two participants (joint go/no-go task). This joint SCE (a.k.a. the social Simon effect) has previously been explained by action/task co-representation, whereas alternative accounts ascribe joint SCEs to spatial components inherent in joint go/no-go tasks that allow participants to code their responses spatially. Although increasing evidence supports the idea that spatial rather than social aspects are responsible for joint SCEs emerging, it is still unclear to which component(s) the spatial coding refers to: the spatial orientation of response keys, the spatial orientation of responding agents, or both. By varying the spatial orientation of the responding agents (Exp. 1) and of the response keys (Exp. 2), independent of the spatial orientation of the stimuli, in the present study we found joint SCEs only when both the seating and the response key alignment matched the stimulus alignment. These results provide evidence that spatial response coding refers not only to the response key arrangement, but also to the—often neglected—spatial orientation of the responding agents.     

A Simon effect for stimulus-response duration

A non-spatial variant of the Simon effect for the stimulus-response (S-R) feature of duration is reported. In Experiment 1 subjects were required to press a single response key either briefly or longer in response to the colour of a visual stimulus that varied in its presentation duration. Short keypresses were initiated faster with short than with long stimulus duration whereas the inverse was observed with long keypresses. In Experiment 2 subjects were required to press a left or right key (according to stimulus form) either briefly or longer (according to stimulus colour). The stimuli concurrently varied in their location (left or right) and duration (short or long), which were both task irrelevant. Approximately additive correspondence effects for S-R location and S-R duration were observed. To summarize, the results suggest that the irrelevant stimulus features of location and duration are processed automatically and prime corresponding responses in an independent manner.     

Display-control arrangement correspondence and logical recoding in the Hedge and Marsh reversal of the Simon effect

When left and right keypresses are made to stimuli in left and right locations, and stimulus location is irrelevant to the task, responses are typically faster when stimulus location corresponds with response location than when it does not (the Simon effect). This effect reverses when the relevant stimulus-response mapping is incompatible, with responses being slower when stimulus and response locations correspond (the Hedge and Marsh reversal). Simon et al. (Acta Psychol. 47 (1981) 63) reported an exception to the Hedge and Marsh reversal for a situation in which the relevant stimulus dimension was the color of a centered visual stimulus and the irrelevant location information was left or right tone location. In contrast, similar experiments have found a reversal of the Simon effect for tone location when relevant visual locations were mapped incompatibly to responses. We conducted four experiments to investigate this discrepancy. Both results were replicated. With an incompatible mapping, irrelevant tone location showed a small reverse Simon effect when the relevant visual dimension was physical location but not when the color of a centered stimulus or the direction in which an arrow pointed conveyed the visual location information. The reversal occurred in a more standard Hedge and Marsh task in which the irrelevant dimension was location of the colored stimulus, but only when the response keys were visibly labeled. Several of the results suggest that display-control arrangement correspondence is the primary cause of the Hedge and Marsh reversal, with logical recoding playing only a secondary role.     

When does visual attention select all features of a distractor?

What happens after visual attention is allocated to an object? Although many theories of attention assume that all of its features are selected and processed, there has been little direct evidence that an irrelevant feature dimension of an attended nontarget is processed. In 5 experiments presented here, the authors used a singleton paradigm to investigate the effect of attention on nontarget objects. Participants made a speeded feature discrimination of a target for which the response was either compatible or incompatible with an irrelevant feature dimension of a distractor. The results show that the irrelevant distractor features were processed to the point that they interfered with the response to the target. The response compatibility effect was observed even when the location of the target or the distractor was invariant, although it was much weaker when both locations were invariant. These results demonstrate that in many circumstances, an attended distractor is completely selected and fully processed, and the complete processing of distractors depends on a number of factors, many of which are related to the strength of attention to the distractor.