Auditory stimulus-response compatibility: Is there a contribution of stimulus-hand correspondence?

 Simon, Hinrichs, and Craft found that when subjects responded to a tone in the left or right ear with a left or right keypress, both ear-response-location correspondence and ear-hand correspondence affected reaction time. This outcome is in contrast to results obtained for auditory and visual Simon tasks (i.e., tasks in which stimulus location is irrelevant) as well as results obtained in visual stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility studies, which show only an effect of spatial S-R correspondence. Experiment 1 was a replication of Simon et al.'s experiment in which spatial mapping and hand placement (uncrossed, crossed) were varied. The results were inconsistent with those of Simon et al., showing no ear-hand compatibility effect. Experiment 2 was a second replication with an additional condition examined in which the stimuli were visual locations. The results showed no contribution of stimulus-hand correspondence for either auditory or visual stimuli. Experiment 3 was a replication of another experiment by Simon et al. in which tone pitch was relevant and tone location irrelevant. Like Simon et al.'s data, our results showed no indication that stimulus-hand correspondence is a significant factor. Overall, our results imply that regardless of whether tone location is relevant or irrelevant, ear-response-location correspondence is the only factor that contributes to S-R compatibility in auditory two-choice reaction tasks. Received: 15 March 1999 / Accepted: 8 June 1999     

A probabilistic formulation and statistical analysis of guttman scaling

By proposing that the latent or true nature of subjects is identified with a limited number of response patterns (the Guttman scale patterns), the probability of an observed response pattern can be written as the sum of products of the probability of the true type multiplied by the chance of sufficient response error to cause the observed pattern to appear. This model contains the proportions of the true types as parameters plus some misclassification probabilities as parameters. Maximum likelihood methods are used to make estimates and test the fit for some examples.     

Functional Analysis and Treatment of Mealtime Problem Behavior for a Person with Developmental Disabilities

We conducted a functional analysis of problem behaviors (spitting and whining) during meals and tested an intervention based on that analysis. The participant was a 13-year-old young woman with severe mental retardation and cerebral palsy. She ate all food presented to her, and the hypotheses were tested that the problem behaviors were maintained either by contingent access to trainer attention or the pace of eating. An attention analysis examined the relationship between problem behavior and trainer attention during the meal. The effect of attention following problem behavior versus ignoring was inconclusive. An analysis of the effects of teacher paced eating, student paced eating (reinforce spoon grasping) and food presented for problem behavior was conducted next. Problem behavior rates were highest when access to food was made contingent on the performance of problem behavior and lowest when spoon grasping resulted in a bite of food. Following analysis, an intervention was designed to reduce the frequency of targeted problem behaviors during mealtime. Reinforcing spoon grasping and a 10s removal of food following problem behavior dramatically reduced spitting and whining during meals. The study provides a demonstration of an extended functional analysis and treatment of a complex behavior pattern.     

Task switching and response correspondence in the psychological refractory period paradigm

Three experiments examined the effects of task switching and response correspondence in a psychological refractory period paradigm. A letter task (vowel-consonant) and a digit task (odd-even) were combined to form 4 possible dual-task pairs in each trial: letter-letter, letter-digit, digit-digit, and digit-letter. Foreknowledge of task transition (repeat or switch) and task identity (letter or digit) was varied across experiments: no foreknowledge in Experiment 1, partial foreknowledge (task transition only) in Experiment 2, and full foreknowledge in Experiment 3. For all experiments, the switch cost for Task 2 was additive with stimulus onset asynchrony, and the response-correspondence effect for Task 2 was numerically smaller in the switch condition than in the repeat condition. These outcomes suggest that reconfiguration for Task 2 takes place after the central processing of Task 1 and that the crosstalk correspondence effect is due to response activation by way of stimulus-response associations.     

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.     

Determinants of the benefit for consistent spatial mappings in dual-task performance of three-choice tasks

Performance of pairs of three-choice tasks shows a consistency benefit for which reaction times are shorter when the stimulus-response mappings for each task are consistent (both corresponding or both mirrored) than when they are inconsistent. In the present study, we examined whether this consistency benefit is reduced at long stimulus onset asynchronies, as it is for pairs of two-choice tasks, or is relatively unaffected, as it is for pairs of four-choice tasks. The consistency benefit was evident for both corresponding and mirrored mappings, at all intervals. For consistent mirrored mappings, the benefit was found for the side stimulus positions (for which responses are crossed) but not for the center position, whereas for consistent corresponding mappings, a benefit was evident for the center position as well. The results for both mappings are in agreement with an emergent mapping-choice account. The consistent corresponding mapping also benefits from subjects’ ability to apply a respond-corresponding rule across tasks. An emergent perceptual-feature process that contributes to the consistency benefit for two-choice tasks does not seem to play a role in tasks with three or more choices.     

Automaticity without extensive training: The role of memory retrieval in implementation of task-defined rules

Although the concept of automaticity is closely associated with extensive rote training, previous studies have shown that task-defined stimulus-response (S-R) mappings can be implemented in parallel and involuntarily, without much training, as if they are automatically processed. An irrelevant task context may trigger a task-defined rule because the rule is actively maintained in working memory, resulting in erroneous implementation of that rule. However, the present study demonstrated that active maintenance of task rules is not necessary for their automatic implementation. Instead, the results are consistent with the memory view of automaticity, according to which task-defined S-R rules are implemented via automatic retrieval of S-R episodes.     

An Empirical Note on the Role of Verbal Labels in Motor Short-Term Memory Tasks

Previous studies of motor short-term memory have shown that when a criterion movement on a semicircular positioning task is accompanied by an appropriate verbal label (a clock-face position), recall of the movement is more accurate than when only the movement is presented. This increased accuracy could be due to either the additional spatial information provided by the label or enhanced retention of the movement information. These two alternatives cannot be distinguished on the basis of previous studies because the studies have not evaluated movement accuracy following presentation of the label alone. The present study employed such a condition in addition to the movement-only and movement-plus-label conditions to distinguish between the two hypotheses. In all conditions, subjects were asked to move to the criterion position after a retention interval of either 5 sec or 60 sec. Evidence indicated that subjects who received both the label and the movement tended to use the spatial information provided by the label at the 60-sec interval. The evidence did not indicate that the verbal label actually enhanced retention of the movement information.