Right-left prevalence effect with horizontal and vertical effectors

We investigated the right-left prevalence effect in spatial compatibility tasks by assessing subjects' performance on a two-dimensional task in which both the horizontal and vertical spatial dimensions were task relevant. Two experiments were performed, in which stimulus-response mappings were one-dimensional (Experiment 1) and two-dimensional (Experiment 2). The subjects responded by using either horizontal or vertical effectors to stimuli appearing in four possible locations. With the one-dimensional mapping, the spatial compatibility effect was present only in the dimension relevant to the mapping. With the two-dimensional mapping, the horizontal compatibility effect was always present, whereas the vertical compatibility effect was present only when vertical effectors were used. This pattern of results indicates that horizontal coding takes place with either horizontal or vertical effectors, whereas vertical coding takes place only when vertical effectors are used.