Adaptive control of ideomotor effect anticipations

According to ideomotor theory, voluntary actions are selected and initiated by means of anticipated action effects. Prior experiments yielded evidence for these effect anticipations with response-effect (R-E) compatibility phenomena using blocked R-E relations. Daily actions, however, typically evoke different effects depending on the situational context. In the present study, we accounted for this natural variability and investigated R-E compatibility effects by a trial-by-trial variation of R-E compatibility relations. In line with recent observations regarding ideomotor learning, R-E compatibility influenced responding only when participants responded in free choice trials assuming that participants then adopted an intention-based action control mode. In contrast, R-E compatibility had no impact when participants responded according to imperative stimuli throughout the experiment, thus when participants adopted a stimulus-based action control mode. Interestingly, once an intention-based mode was established because of free choice trials within an experimental block, we observed response compatibility effects in free as well as forced choice trials. These findings extend and refine theoretical assumptions on different action control modes in goal-directed behavior and the specific contribution of ideomotor processes to intention-based action control.     

反应-效应相容性范式下不同数字表征方式和身体经验对数字认知加工的影响

采用反应-效应相容性范式,探讨不同数字表征方式和身体经验对个体数字认知加工的影响。实验1首先采用木棒数字表征从知觉层面证明反应-效应相容性效应的存在;实验2采用累计手指数字表征考察手指数字表征在反应-效应相容性匹配中的优势;实验3则进一步排除了近似数量表征系统的影响,从语义层面探讨中国文化背景下语义概念手指数字表征的反应-效应相容性对数字认知加工的影响。结果发现,不同的数字表征系统中均存在反应-效应相容性效应,支持了观念运动理论;相比客体材料,手指数字表征在相容条件下具有明显的匹配优势,支持了具身数量的观点。     

On the timescale of stimulus-based action-effect learning

When performing an action, people pick up associations between their actions and the resulting consequences of that action, a phenomenon that has been termed response (R)-effect (E) learning. In the present study, we investigated incidental R-E learning in a forced-choice-that is, a stimulus (S)-based-acquisition mode. Specifically, the study examined at which timescale R-E learning evolves-that is, how many encounters are actually needed to form stable R-E associations. The learning of R-E associations was assessed in a subsequent test phase via effect-based response priming. Experiment 1 tested 4 different numbers of S-R-E repetitions for a 2-2-2 S-R-E mapping. Experiment 2 disentangled the contributions of S-E and R-E associations to the facilitating impact of effect-based response priming by means of a 4-2-4 S-R-E mapping. Experiment 3 investigated whether R-E associations can be picked up even when a given E cannot be unequivocally predicted based on the antecedent S in case of inconsistent S-R-E couplings. Together, the results of the present study clearly show that R-E learning occurs in a stimulus-based action mode and that it evolves very rapidly after only 12 S-R-E repetitions. Moreover, the present findings suggest that at least in this initial phase of learning, complete S-R-E consistency seems to be relevant for R-E learning.     

Response-effect compatibility in manual choice reaction tasks

This study investigated whether compatibility between responses and their consistent sensorial effects influences performance in manual choice reaction tasks. In Experiment 1 responses to the nonspatial stimulus attribute of color were affected by the correspondence between the location of responses and the location of their visual effects. In Experiment 2, a comparable influence was found with nonspatial responses of varying force and nonspatial response effects of varying auditory intensity. Experiment 3 ruled out the hypothesis that acquired stimulus-effect associations may account for this influence of response-effect compatibility. In sum, the results show that forthcoming response effects influence response selection as if these effects were already sensorially present, suggesting that in line with the classical ideomotor theory, anticipated response effects play a substantial role in response selection.     

Verbal response-effect compatibility

Ideomotor theory states that motor responses are activated by an anticipation of their sensory effects. We assumed that anticipated effects would produce response-effect (R-E) compatibility when there is dimensional overlap of effects and responses. In a four-choice task, visual digit stimuli called for verbal responses (color names). Each response produced a written response-effect on the screen. In different groups, the response-effect was a colored color word (e.g., blue in blue), a white color word, or a colored nonword (Xs in blue). In different blocks, the predictable effects were either incompatible (e.g., response "blue" --> effect: green) or compatible with the response. We found faster responses with compatible than with incompatible R-E mappings. The compatibility effect was strongest with colored words, intermediate with white words, and smallest with colored nonwords. We conclude that effect anticipation influences response selection on both a perceptual level (related to the word's color) and a conceptual level (related to the word's meaning).     

A Referential coding Explanation for Compatibility Effects of Physically Orthogonal Stimulus and Response Dimensions

This study addresses the dependence of compatibility effects on responding hand with horizontally oriented stimuli and vertically oriented responses (H-V effect) and with vertically oriented stimuli and horizontally oriented responses (V-H effect) reported by Bauer and Miller (1982). Experiment 1 replicated the H-V effect. In Experiment 2, the subject was instructed to respond with the hand in line with the response keys. That eliminated the H-V effect. In Experiment 3, the response board was placed to the left or right side of the subject, yielding a considerably reduced H-V effect and a novel compatibility effect dependent on board location. In Experiment 4, the V-H effect was produced when the subject was required to respond with the hand in line with the response keys. With the hand rotated through 90 in Experiment 5, the V-H effect was eliminated, and a main effect of mapping was observed. The results challenge Bauer and Miller's movement-preference hypothesis and support a referential-coding hypothesis proposed by the author. This assumes that response positions are coded in reference to hand posture, so that physically orthogonal stimulus and response dimensions can overlap with respect to their mental representations. The applicability of this hypothesis to other compatibility effects is demonstrated, and its significance for compatibility theories is briefly discussed.     

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.     

The role of response readiness in subliminal visuomotor processes

The present study aims to examine the impact of response readiness on visuomotor processes triggered by subliminal stimuli using a mixed paradigm involving the masked prime paradigm and a foreperiod paradigm. Experiment 1 ensured that response readiness was successfully manipulated in the mixed paradigm. Importantly, Experiment 2 found that the negative compatibility effect (NCE; a behavioral indicator of subliminal visuomotor processes) disappeared and that response time lost its power to modulate the compatibility effect (CE) with reduced response readiness (due to temporal uncertainty). These results of CEs both independent of response latency and across different levels of response latency indicate that response readiness is a prerequisite for obtaining the NCE. The findings suggest that automatic processing of subliminal stimuli is susceptible to top-down control for reducing the interference of irrelevant information, which ensures a high degree of adaptability and flexibility of our cognitive system in interactions with the changing environment.     

Negative affect varying in motivational intensity influences scope of memory

Emotions influence cognitive processes involved in memory. While some research has suggested that cognitive scope is determined by affective valence, recent models of emotion–cognition interactions suggest that motivational intensity, rather than valence, influences these processes. The present research was designed to clarify how negative affects differing in motivational intensity impact memory for centrally or peripherally presented information. Experiments 1 & 2 found that, relative to a neutral condition, high intensity negative affect (anger) enhances memory for centrally presented information. Experiment 3 replicated this effect using another high intensity negative affect (threat). Experiment 4 extended this by finding that, relative to a neutral condition, low intensity negative affect (sadness) enhanced memory for peripherally presented information. Finally, in Experiment 5, the effects of sadness and threat on scope of memory were directly compared, finding that threat narrowed scope of memory, while sadness broadened scope of memory. Together, these results provide additional support for the motivational dimensional model of cognitive scope, in that high intensity emotions narrow cognitive scope, while low intensity emotions broaden cognitive scope.     

Coloring an action: Intending to produce color events eliminates the Stroop effect

The implications of an ideomotor approach to action control were investigated. In Experiment 1, participants made manual responses to letter stimuli and they were presented with response-contingent color patches, i.e., colored action effects. This rendered stimuli of the same color as an action's effect effective primes of that action, suggesting that bilateral associations were created between actions and the effects they produced. Experiment 2 combined this set-up with a manual Stroop task, i.e., participants responded to congruent, neutral, or incongruent color-word compounds. Standard Stroop effects were observed in a control group without action effects and in a group with target-incompatible action effects, but the reaction time Stroop effect was eliminated if actions produced target-compatible color effects (e.g., blue word --> left key --> blue patch). Experiment 3 did not replicate this interaction between target-effect compatibility and color-word congruency with color words as action effects, which rules out semantically based accounts. Theoretical implications for both action-effect acquisition and the Stroop effect are discussed. It is suggested that learning action effects, the features of which overlap with the target, allows and motivates people to recode their actions in ways that make them more stimulus-compatible. This provides a processing shortcut for translating the relevant stimulus into the correct response and, thus, shields processing from the impact of competing word distractors.     

The Simon task with multi-component responses: two loci of response–effect compatibility

The stimulus–response compatibility (SRC) effect refers to the phenomenon that responses are faster and more accurate when stimulus and response correspond than when they do not. The phenomenon is robust in that it is observed even when SRC is irrelevant to performing the task, a variant known as the Simon effect. Recent studies also demonstrated that responses are faster when they are spatially compatible with their effects in the environment (action effects) than when they are incompatible. This response–effect (R–E) compatibility effect is thought to stem from the fact that stimuli first activate anticipated effect codes, which then activate corresponding action codes. In the present study, the Simon task was used to examine influences of multiple response components on performance. Three response components were orthogonally manipulated. The results of three experiments indicated that there are two separate processes that are influenced by R–E compatibility; one that is responsible for the SRC effect (S–R translation) and the other that is independent of SRC (action programming). The influence of R–E compatibility on the former process depended on manipulations that varied attentional demands of the task.     

Compatibility of precuing and of S-R mapping in choice reactions

This study investigates information processing elicited by precuing a subset of alternatives in a choice reaction task. The aim was to study the influence of some task variables on the effectiveness of precuing, in order to determine the locus of differential precuing effects, in either central decisional processing or in motor programming. Partial advance information (PAI) was given 300 msec in advance of the action signal and it indicated the subset from which the action signal would be chosen. Thus, precuing reduced the number of alternatives. The resulting decrease of reaction time (RT) was assessed under various levels of SR compatibility, response specificity and cue compatibility. Cue compatibility refers to the naturalness of the (spatial) relation between the cue signals and the stimulus-response pairs. This study shows that (a) precuing effectiveness is strongly affected by cue compatibility, and (b) cue compatibility should be viewed as a twofold concept: it refers to the naturalness of the relation of the cue signal, either with action signals or with responses.Experiment 1 compared a naming and a pointing task. Although in both tasks the cue signal was compatible with the cued action signals, the naming task had a lower level of SR compatibility and also a lower level of compatibility between the cue signal and responses. Precuing was highly effective when pointing towards the action signal, but hardly effective when naming ordinal positions. Experiments 2–4, using only a pointing task, showed a decrease of the precuing effect with a decrease of either type of cue compatibility, although cue compatibility with action signals was the strongest factor. Low SR compatibility further decreased the size of the precuing effect caused by low compatibility between cue and action signals. Differential precuing effects did not result from differences in response specificity (i.e., the lack of similarity among the cued responses). It is concluded that precuing and both types of cue compatibility affect the stage of response decision, while no evidence was found for effects on motor programming. Implications are discussed for movement precuing studies that rely on differential precuing effects to discover properties of motor programming.     

Flowers and spiders in spatial stimulus-response compatibility: does affective valence influence selection of task-sets or selection of responses?

The present study examined the effect of stimulus valence on two levels of selection in the cognitive system, selection of a task-set and selection of a response. In the first experiment, participants performed a spatial compatibility task (pressing left and right keys according to the locations of stimuli) in which stimulus-response mappings were determined by stimulus valence. There was a standard spatial stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect for positive stimuli (flowers) and a reversed SRC effect for negative stimuli (spiders), but the same data could be interpreted as showing faster responses when positive and negative stimuli were assigned to compatible and incompatible mappings, respectively, than when the assignment was opposite. Experiment 2 disentangled these interpretations, showing that valence did not influence a spatial SRC effect (Simon effect) when task-set retrieval was unnecessary. Experiments 3 and 4 replaced keypress responses with joystick deflections that afforded approach/avoidance action coding. Stimulus valence modulated the Simon effect (but did not reverse it) when the valence was task-relevant (Experiment 3) as well as when it was task-irrelevant (Experiment 4). Therefore, stimulus valence influences task-set selection and response selection, but the influence on the latter is limited to conditions where responses afford approach/avoidance action coding.     

The role of emotional context in facilitating imitative actions

In two experiments, we explored whether emotional context influences imitative action tendencies. To this end, we examined how emotional pictures, presented as primes, affect imitative tendencies using a compatibility paradigm. In Experiment 1, when seen index finger movements (lifting or tapping) and pre-instructed finger movements (tapping) were the same (tapping–tapping, compatible trials), participants were faster than when they were different (lifting–tapping, incompatible trials). This compatibility effect was enhanced when the seen finger movement was preceded by negative primes compared with positive or neutral primes. In Experiment 2, using only negative and neutral primes, the influence of negative primes on the compatibility effect was replicated with participants performing two types of pre-instructed finger movements (tapping and lifting). This emotional modulation of the compatibility effect was independent of the participants' trait anxiety level. Moreover, the emotional modulation pertained primarily to the compatible conditions, suggesting facilitated imitation due to negatively valent primes rather than increased interference. We speculate that negative stimuli increase imitative tendencies as a natural response in potential flight-or-fight situations.     

Movement observation affects movement execution in a simple response task

The present study was designed to examine the hypothesis that stimulus-response arrangements with high ideomotor compatibility lead to substantial compatibility effects even in simple response tasks. In Experiment 1, participants executed pre-instructed finger movements in response to compatible and incompatible finger movements. A pronounced reaction time advantage was found for compatible as compared to incompatible trials. Experiment 2 revealed a much smaller compatibility effect for less ideomotor-compatible object movements compared to finger movements. Experiment 3 presented normal stimuli (hand upright) and flipped stimuli (hand upside-down). Two components were found to contribute to the compatibility effect, a dynamic spatial compatibility component (related to movement directions) and an ideomotor component (related to movement types). The implications of these results for theories about stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) as well as for theories about imitation are discussed.     

Stimulus-response compatibilities between vertically oriented stimuli and horizontally oriented responses: the effects of hand position and posture

Stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility effects between vertically oriented stimuli (above or below fixation) and horizontally oriented responses (left or right switch deflections by a single hand) have been shown to depend both on which hand responds (Bauer & Miller, 1982) and on the location at which the response is made (eccentricity on a frontoparallel line; Michaels, 1989). In the latter study, hand position and hand posture were confounded, so it is unclear which variable determined the compatibility effect. In Experiment 1, the importance of effector position was tested. Vertically oriented stimuli were paired with a horizontal response solicited at different locations but always involving the same hand posture. Compatibility effects emerged, and their direction depended on position. In Experiment 2, the compatibilities were not evident in a simple reaction time paradigm, so the effect was not due to differential ease of responses. In Experiment 3, a change in hand posture (palm up or palm down) at the same location (the body midline) also affected the compatibilities. It was concluded that the S-R compatibility of orthogonally oriented stimuli and responses is influenced by (1) which hand responds, (2) the location of that hand, and (3) its posture. The results imply that both postural and positional states of the action system affect S-R compatibility.     

The role of anticipation and intention in the learning of effects of self-performed actions

The anticipative learning model for acquiring action-effect relations states that the acquisition of action-effect relations depends on processes that are part of action planning, in particular the anticipation of possible effects. Experiment 1 shows that response planning is indeed crucial for the learning of response effects. In this experiment distractors (tones) were presented either during response preparation or in the time interval between response execution and the presentation of a response effect. Response-effect learning was impaired when the distractors were presented during response preparation. The finding is consistent with the assumption that the distractors impaired the anticipation of potential effects and therefore reduced effect learning. In Experiment 2 all responses had two effects. Participants were instructed to produce one of the effects. Under this condition, response-effect learning was only found for the instructed effect, not for the non-instructed effect. The two experiments thus support the view that response-effect learning is selective and depends on the anticipation of potential effects during response planning. The results are discussed in terms of a model that explains both the learning of response-effect relations and the use of these effects for action control within the same theoretical framework.     

Task-set inertia and memory-consolidation bottleneck in dual tasks

Three dual-task experiments examined the influence of processing a briefly presented visual object for deferred verbal report on performance in an unrelated auditory-manual reaction time (RT) task. RT was increased at short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) relative to long SOAs, showing that memory consolidation processes can produce a functional processing bottleneck in dual-task performance. In addition, the experiments manipulated the spatial compatibility of the orientation of the visual object and the side of the speeded manual response. This cross-task compatibility produced relative RT benefits only when the instruction for the visual task emphasized overlap at the level of response codes across the task sets (Experiment 1). However, once the effective task set was in place, it continued to produce cross-task compatibility effects even in single-task situations (“ignore” trials in Experiment 2) and when instructions for the visual task did not explicitly require spatial coding of object orientation (Experiment 3). Taken together, the data suggest a considerable degree of task-set inertia in dual-task performance, which is also reinforced by finding costs of switching task sequences (e.g., AC → BC vs. BC → BC) in Experiment 3.     

Flanker effects on motor output and the late-level response activation hypothesis.

When participants must respond to a relevant central target and ignore irrelevant flanking stimuli, the flankers produce a flanker compatibility effect on behavioural measures. Current accounts of the flanker compatibility effect assume that both target and flanker stimuli affect response activation. This idea is supported by electrophysiological studies, which show that irrelevant flanker stimuli can affect the motor system. The present experiments examined the characteristics of flanker effects on the motor system by analysing the details of the motor output with response force measures. A total of 60 participants responded in the flanker task to arrows (Experiment 1) or letters (Experiment 2). Reaction time as well as response force increased on incompatible trials. Analyses of the distribution of incorrect activation revealed that both response times and correct motor output increased with the amount of incorrect activity. However, the flanker compatibility effect was only marginally modulated by incorrect activity. Results suggest that the largest part of the flanker compatibility effect cannot be attributed to response activation and competition at late levels of the response system.     

Contextual influences on implicit evaluation: a test of additive versus contrastive effects of evaluative context stimuli in affective priming

Drawing on two alternative accounts of the affective priming effect (spreading activation vs. response interference), the present research investigated the underlying processes of how evaluative context stimuli influence implicit evaluations in the affective priming task. Employing two sequentially presented prime stimuli (rather than a single prime), two experiments showed that affective priming effects elicited by a given prime stimulus were more pronounced when this stimulus was preceded by a context prime of the opposite valence than when it was preceded by a context prime of the same valence. This effect consistently emerged for pictures (Experiment 1) and words (Experiment 2) as prime stimuli. These results suggest that the impact of evaluative context stimuli on implicit evaluations is mediated by contrast effects in the attention to evaluative information rather than by additive effects in the activation of evaluative information in associative memory.