Influence of stimulus-response translations on response programming: examining the relationship of arm, direction, and extent of movement

Two experiments examined whether the programming relationships of direction and extent of movement (experiment 1) and arm, direction, and extent of movement (experiment 2) are affected by a cognitive recoding process called a stimulus-response translation. The programming of these task-defined parameters was studied via the movement precue method. The effect of a spatial translation was studied by manipulating stimulus-response compatibility. The results from both experiments showed that the patterns of reaction time for these parameters could be altered by indirect or noncompatible stimulus-response mappings. It was concluded that, when stimulus-response compatibility was deficient, effects that might be attributed to programming processes were due instead to the translation process. In experiment 2, the findings obtained from a spatially compatible stimulus-response ensemble demonstrated that the movement parameters of arm, direction, and extent could be selectively manipulated via the precue method. Therefore, it was concluded that this method may be a useful tool in understanding how motoric decisions are made prior to movement, but only when the spatial mapping among stimuli and responses is maximally compatible.