歧义句意义选择中的刺激-反应相容性效应

两个实验以汉语歧义句为材料,探讨了前后刺激语义线索在不同相容条件下歧义句意义选择的过程。结果表明(1)在歧义句意义选择中存在刺激刺激间和刺激反应间的语义线索相容性效应;(2)在刺激刺激语义线索相容条件下,刺激刺激维度会产生维度冗余增益效应并对反应维度产生增益,而在不相容或冲突条件下,在刺激刺激维度上出现知觉竞争现象,产生的侵扰或分心阻碍了对反应维度的加工;(3)只有刺激刺激维度的良好重合才有可能出现刺激反应维度上的相容性效应。     

Evidence for effects of phonological correspondence between visible speech and written syllables

The present study investigated compatibility effects between written and spoken syllables. Participants saw the syllables "Ba" or "Da" printed on a speaker's mouth that was articulating either /b wedge / or /d wedge /. Participants classified either the printed syllable or the mouth movement by pressing a left or right key. Responses were faster when mouth movement and letters were congruent regardless of imperative stimulus dimension. As the two stimulus dimensions (mouth movements and letters) showed dimensional overlap, but did not overlap with the response, stimulus-response compatibility was ruled out according to some models. It is argued that the compatibility effect was due to the competition of phonological codes at a stage preceding response selection. Also, the results lend support to the view that Stroop-like tasks are ambiguous with regard to the locus of compatibility effects. Stimulus-response and stimulus-stimulus compatibility may be observed.     

Dimensional overlap: cognitive basis for stimulus-response compatibility--a model and taxonomy

The classic problem of stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility (SRC) is addressed. A cognitive model is proposed that views the stimulus and response sets in S-R ensembles as categories with dimensions that may or may not overlap. If they do overlap, the task may be compatible or incompatible, depending on the assigned S-R mapping. If they do not overlap, the task is noncompatible regardless of the assigned mapping. The overlapping dimensions may be relevant or not. The model provides a systematic account of SRC effects, a taxonomy of simple performance tasks that were hitherto thought to be unrelated, and suggestive parallels between these tasks and the experimental paradigms that have traditionally been used to study attentional, controlled, and automatic processes.     

Dilution of compatibility effects in Simon-type tasks depends on categorical similarity between distractors and diluters

The presence of a distracting stimulus during performance of the Stroop color-naming task leads to dilution of the Stroop effect. Because the automatic activation of word meaning may interfere with the task-relevant stimulus feature (text color; stimulus-stimulus [S-S] interference) and the response (saying the text color; stimulus-response [S-R] interference), it is unclear which of these types of interference is diluted. We introduce a new dilution paradigm using word- and arrow-based Simon tasks, in which only S-R interference is present. Participants made a left or right response to a central color target. A task-irrelevant location-word (Experiment 1) or arrow (Experiment 2) distractor adjacent to the target produced S-R compatibility effects. An additional neutral word or symbol series (diluter) was sometimes presented on the opposite side of the target from the distractor. The compatibility effect was smaller when the distractor and diluter category domains matched than when they mismatched. This result provides evidence that S-R compatibility effects are susceptible to the presence of diluters that are categorically similar to the distractors.     

Interactions between stimulus-stimulus congruence and stimulus-response compatibility

According to a central claim of Kornblum's dimensional-overlap model, response-related processes do not start before stimulus-related processes have been completed, which implies an additive relationship between effects of stimulus-stimulus congruence and stimulus-response compatibility. Three experiments were conducted to test this prediction. In Exp. 1, additive effects of color-word congruence (Stroop effect) and irrelevant spatial S-R compatibility (Simon effect) were in fact obtained. However, interactions between congruence and compatibility were observed in Exp. 2, where flanker-target congruence was varied, and in Exp. 3, where inter-level congruence of multi-level letters was manipulated. It is argued that these findings are inconsistent with the seriality assumption of the dimensional-overlap model, but that they support models claiming a temporal overlap of stimulus and response processing instead.     

Is automatic imitation a specialized form of stimulus–response compatibility? Dissociating imitative and spatial compatibilities

In recent years research on automatic imitation has received considerable attention because it represents an experimental platform for investigating a number of interrelated theories suggesting that the perception of action automatically activates corresponding motor programs. A key debate within this research centers on whether automatic imitation is any different than other long-term S-R associations, such as spatial stimulus-response compatibility. One approach to resolving this issue is to examine whether automatic imitation shows similar response characteristics as other classes of stimulus-response compatibility. This hypothesis was tested by comparing imitative and spatial compatibility effects with a two alternative forced-choice stimulus-response compatibility paradigm. The stimulus on each trial was a left or right hand with either the index or middle finger tapping down. Speeded responses were performed with the index or middle finger of the right hand in response to the identity or the left-right spatial position of the stimulus finger. Two different tasks were administered: one that involved responding to the stimulus (S-R) and one that involved responding to the opposite stimulus (OS-R; i.e., the one not presented on that trial). Based on previous research and a connectionist model, we predicted standard compatibility effects for both spatial and imitative compatibility in the S-R task, and a reverse compatibility effect for spatial compatibility, but not for imitative compatibility, in the OS-R task. The results from the mean response times, mean percentage of errors, and response time distributions all converged to support these predictions. A second noteworthy result was that the recoding of the finger identity in the OS-R task required significantly more time than the recoding of the left-right spatial position, but the encoding time for the two stimuli in the S-R task was equivalent. In sum, this evidence suggests that the processing of spatial and imitative compatibility is dissociable with regard to two different processes in dual processing models of stimulus-response compatibility.     

On the role of stimulus-response and stimulus-stimulus compatibility in the Stroop effect

Stroop effects might be due to differences in stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) and/or to differences in stimulus-stimulus compatibility (SSC). Recent evidence for the role of SSC is inconclusive, because there were no controls for effects of SRC that are based on short-term associations between stimuli and responses (i.e., associations set up as the result of task instructions). In two experiments, SRC effects were controlled for. Regardless of whether the irrelevant and the relevant stimulus features were separated (Experiment 1) or integrated in one stimulus (Experiment 2), the results revealed an effect of SSC and an effect of SRC that was based on short-term associations. The results thus confirm that both processes at the level of encoding and processes at the level of response selection contribute to the Stroop effect.     

Multidimensional vector model of stimulus-response compatibility

The present study proposes and examines the multidimensional vector (MDV) model framework as a modeling schema for choice response times. MDV extends the Thurstonian model, as well as signal detection theory, to classification tasks by taking into account the influence of response properties on stimulus discrimination. It is capable of accounting for stimulus-response compatibility, which is known to be an influential task variable determining choice-reaction performance but has not been considered in previous mathematical modeling efforts. Specific MDV models were developed for 5 experiments using the Simon task, for which stimulus location is task irrelevant, to examine the validity of model assumptions and illustrate characteristic behaviors of model parameters. The MDV models accounted for the experimental data to a remarkable degree, demonstrating the adequacy of the framework as a general schema for modeling the latency of choice performance. Some modeling issues involved in the MDV model framework are discussed.     

Stimulus-response compatibility and response preparation: effects on motor component of information processing for upper and lower limb responses

The effects of stimulus-response compatibility and response preparation on the motor component of the information processing system were investigated by analyzing the fractionated reaction time for the upper and lower limbs. The reaction time was divided into two periods with respect to the onset of electromyographic activity, premotor and motor times. The response preparation was manipulated by the probability that the locations of the precue and subsequent imperative stimulus corresponded. On a stimulus-response compatible task, subjects were required to release a key on the same side as an imperative stimulus, irrespective of the precued side. On an incompatible task, subjects were required to act in the reverse manner. The upper and lower limb responses were measured during both tasks. A repeated-measures design was used with 12 male university students. Analysis of the reaction and premotor times indicated that the stimulus-response compatibility effect became larger as response preparation decreased. The analysis of motor time yielded significant interactions between stimulus-response compatibility and limb and between response preparation and limb. These findings indicated that the motor component of information processing for the lower limb response is affected by both stimulus-response compatibility and response preparation.     

Differential dynamics of spatial and non-spatial stimulus-response compatibility effects: a dual task LRP study

Choice reaction times are shorter when stimulus and response features are compatible rather than incompatible. Recent studies revealed that spatial compatibility effects in Simon tasks are strongly attenuated when there is temporal overlap with a different high-priority task. In contrast, non-spatial variants of the Simon task appear to be unaffected by task overlap. The present study used the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) within a dual task design to elucidate the dynamics underlying these differential effects for a color and a spatial variant of the Simon task. In the color version there was no sign of early response priming by irrelevant stimulus features in the LRP. The color compatibility effect was independent of task overlap and reflected in the LRP onset latency. In contrast, in the spatial version, priming by irrelevant stimulus location showed up and was mirrored by early LRP activation. Response priming and the corresponding Simon effect, however, were present only in case of little temporal overlap with the primary task. The absence of spatial compatibility effects at strong temporal overlap suggests that response conflicts due to stimulus-related priming depend on the availability of processing resources.     

Inhibition of return using discrimination of location

The present study investigated "inhibition of return" which refers to increased response latency when the target in a location discrimination task appears in the same location on consecutive trials. Location discrimination tasks were performed by 28 university students (19-21 years of age) in two experiments. In Exp. 1 the task was to press a left or right button in response to a stimulus displayed on a computer screen. The first condition manipulated stimulus-response compatibility which resulted in changing the inhibition of return. Inhibition of return was stronger when the condition was stimulus-response incompatibility. This result shows that inhibition of return functions strongly under incompatible conditions. A second condition required performance of dual tasks in Exp. 2. Again, changes in inhibition of return were seen. These results show that inhibition of return functions strongly under both dual task and incompatible conditions. Inhibition of return was interpreted as functioning strongly when the task was more difficult.     

Overlapping mental operations in serial performance with preview

Dual-task research has revealed a response-selection bottleneck: response selection cannot occur simultaneously in two different tasks, though perceptual processing may overlap response selection (Welford, 1952; Pashler & Johnston, 1989). In serial performance with preview, the same task is performed repeatedly, but stimuli are available well before response. Does the dual-task bottleneck limit the rate of responding in this situation, despite the fact that task set need not change? Four experiments examined manual responses to letters, varying stimulus preview. Preview increased RTs for the first response and reduced the subsequent inter-response intervals (IRIs). Preview also reduced the effect of visual intensity and response duration on IRIs, whereas effects of stimulus-response mapping variables were unchanged. These results indicate that the response-selection bottleneck limits serial performance, just as it limits concurrent performance of two unrelated tasks. This implies that the response-selection bottleneck is not caused by the need to switch task set.     

The Simon effect and its reversal in three-choice Hedge and Marsh tasks: evidence for irrelevant stimulus-response compatibility and stimulus congruity

In 2-choice A. Hedge and N. W. A. Marsh (1975) tasks or S. Kornblum's (1992) Type-5 ensembles, irrelevant stimulus-response compatibility (SRC), logical recoding, display control arrangement correspondence (DCC), and stimulus congruity are confounded. By using 3 response alternatives and both compatible and incompatible stimulus-response mappings, irrelevant SRC was pitted against logical recoding and both of them were disentangled from DCC and stimulus congruity. By varying response labels on a trial-by-trial basis and using different stimuli and responses, DCC and stimulus congruity were decoupled. Results from 4 experiments showed that neither logical recoding nor DCC contributes to the Simon effect and its reversal. Irrelevant SRC and stimulus congruity are necessary but neither is sufficient to account for the Simon effect and its reversal. A connectionist model of compatibility incorporating both irrelevant SRC and stimulus congruity appears to account for the results.     

Sequence learning in Parkinson's disease: the effect of spatial stimulus-response compatibility

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have repeatedly demonstrated reduced sequence-specific learning effects in serial reaction time tasks (SRTs). Previous research with PD patients has mainly employed the 'classical' SRT task, involving a spatially compatible assignment of stimuli and responses. From cognitive research, it is known that spatial compatibility triggers rapid, automatic responses in the direction of the stimulus. Automatic responding has shown to be disinhibited in PD patients and may therefore interfere with stimulus anticipation during the learning process. The aim of the present study was to test this hypothesis by investigating if reduced sequence-specific learning depends on spatial stimulus-response compatibility. PD patients and age-matched controls were examined either with an SRT variant involving central stimulus presentation, thereby preventing automatic linking of stimulus and response locations, or with a spatially compatible SRT task. Patients showed reduced sequence-specific learning effects only when the stimulus-response assignment was spatially compatible. This pattern of results confirms the hypothesis that sequence learning deficits in PD may result from a predominance of automatic response activation over learning-based stimulus anticipations during the learning phase.     

Transfer of orthogonal stimulus-response mappings to an orthogonal Simon task

When up-down stimulus locations are mapped to left-right keypresses, an overall advantage for the up-right/down-left mapping is often obtained that varies as a function of response eccentricity. This orthogonal stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect also occurs when stimulus location is irrelevant, a phenomenon called the orthogonal Simon effect, and has been attributed to correspondence of stimulus and response code polarities. The Simon effect for horizontal stimulus-response (S-R) arrangements has been shown to be affected by short-term S-R associations established through the mapping used for a prior SRC task in which stimulus location was relevant. We examined whether such associations also transfer between orthogonal SRC and Simon tasks and whether correspondence of code polarities continues to contribute to performance in the Simon task. In Experiment 1, the orthogonal Simon effect was larger after practising with an up-right/down-left mapping of visual stimuli to responses than with the alternative mapping, for which the orthogonal Simon effect tended to reverse. Experiment 2 showed similar results when practice was with high (up) and low (down) pitch tones, though the influence of practice mapping was not as large as that in Experiment 1, implying that the short-term S-R associations acquired in practice are at least in part not modality specific. In Experiment 3, response eccentricity and practice mapping were shown to have separate influences on the orthogonal Simon effect, as expected if both code polarity and acquired S-R associations contribute to performance.     

Polarity correspondence: A general principle for performance of speeded binary classification tasks

Differences in performance with various stimulus-response mappings are among the most prevalent findings for binary choice reaction tasks. The authors show that perceptual or conceptual similarity is not necessary to obtain mapping effects; a type of structural similarity is sufficient. Specifically, stimulus and response alternatives are coded as positive and negative polarity along several dimensions, and polarity correspondence is sufficient to produce mapping effects. The authors make the case for this polarity correspondence principle using the literature on word-picture verification and then provide evidence that polarity correspondence is a determinant of mapping effects in orthogonal stimulus-response compatibility, numerical judgment, and implicit association tasks. The authors conclude by discussing implications of this principle for interpretation of results from binary choice tasks and future model development.     

Correlations between spatial compatibility effects: are arrows more like locations or words?

Responses are more efficient when their spatial mappings with features of targets are compatible compared to when they are incompatible, even when those features are irrelevant to task performance. Currently, a debate exists as to whether spatial information conveyed by different stimulus modes leads to qualitatively different spatial representations. We investigated the relations between three of the most commonly used spatial stimulus modes-arrows, locations, and location words-using correlations of compatibility effects between each of these modes as well as compatibility effects at different segments of their response time distributions. Our results show that when spatial information is irrelevant to task performance (the Simon task), the compatibility effects elicited by arrows and words are more strongly related with each other than with those of locations. However, when spatial information is task relevant (the stimulus-response compatibility SRC task), the compatibility effects elicited by arrows and locations are more related, and both are less related to the effect elicited by words. We suggest that these changing relations between stimulus modes are strategically determined based on which spatial coding technique for arrows is most advantageous to task performance. Furthermore, the varying relations between these spatial compatibility effects indicate that the compatibility effect with one stimulus mode is not always predictive of the compatibility effect in another mode.     

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 dimensional overlap on location-related priming in the Simon task

Choice reaction times are shorter when stimulus and response locations are compatible than when they are incompatible as in the Simon effect. Recent studies revealed that Simon effects are strongly attenuated when there is temporal overlap with a different high-priority task, accompanied by a decrease of early location-related response priming as reflected in the lateralized readiness potential (LRP). The latter result was obtained in a study excluding overlap of stimulus location with any other dimension in the tasks. Independent evidence suggests that location-related priming might be present in conditions with dimensional overlap. Here we tested this prediction in a dual-task experiment supplemented with recording LRPs. The secondary task was either a standard Simon task where irrelevant stimulus location overlapped with dimensions of the primary task or a Stroop-like Simon task including additional overlap of irrelevant and relevant stimulus attributes. At high temporal overlap, there was no Simon effect nor was there stimulus-related response priming in either condition. Therefore stimulus-triggered response priming seems to be abolished in conditions of limited capacity even if the likelihood of an S–R compatibility effect is maximized.     

The role of response selection in sequence learning

We investigated the role of response selection in sequence learning in the serial reaction time (SRT) task, by manipulating stimulus-response compatibility. Under conditions in which other types of learning, like perceptual, response-based, and response-effect learning, were unaffected, sequence learning was better with an incompatible than with a compatible stimulus-response mapping. Stimulus discriminability, on the other hand, had no influence on the amount of sequence learning. This indicates that the compatibility effects cannot be accounted for by a different level of task difficulty. Relating our results to the dimensional overlap model (Kornblum, Hasbroucq, & Osman, 1990), which assumes that incompatible stimulus-response mappings require more controlled response selection than do compatible stimulus-response mapping, we suggest that sequence learning in the SRT task is particularly effective when response selection occurs in a controlled way.