Vertically arrayed stimuli and responses: transfer of incompatible spatial mapping to Simon task occurs regardless of response-device orientation

Multi-sensory feedback improves spatially compatible sensori-motor responses

To interact with machines, from computers to cars, we need to monitor multiple sensory stimuli, and respond to them with specific motor actions. It has been shown that our ability to react to a sensory stimulus is dependent on both the stimulus modality, as well as the spatial compatibility of the stimulus and the required response. However, the compatibility effects have been examined for sensory modalities individually, and rarely for scenarios requiring individuals to choose from multiple actions. Here, we compared response time of participants when they had to choose one of several spatially distinct, but compatible, responses to visual, tactile or simultaneous visual and tactile stimuli. We observed that the presence of both tactile and visual stimuli consistently improved the response time relative to when either stimulus was presented alone. While we did not observe a difference in response times of visual and tactile stimuli, the spatial stimulus localization was observed to be faster for visual stimuli compared to tactile stimuli.

Practice and transfer with mappings of spoon tip and handle to keypress responses

When orientation of a horizontal spoon image varies to the left or right, instructions can map left and right keypresses to the tip or handle location. We conducted Experiment 1 to determine whether practice with an incompatible mapping of the salient tip transfers to a test session in which the relevant part and/or mapping are changed. Participants performed 80 practice trials with tip-incompatible mapping, followed by 80 test trials with tip-compatible, tip-incompatible, handle-compatible, or handle-incompatible mapping. Performance improved across 20-trial blocks in the practice session. In the test session, responses were 65 ms faster with tip-compatible than tip-incompatible mapping but 31 ms faster with handle-incompatible than handle-compatible mapping. This latter result, and verbal reports, indicate that some participants adopted a strategy of responding compatibly to the salient tip even though instructed to respond to the handle. Experiment 2 focused on whether participants with handle-incompatible mapping instructions would adopt the tip-compatible strategy spontaneously or after receiving a hint: 77% of participants reported adopting the tip-compatible strategy in Session 1, showing that prior experience responding to the tip is not necessary and 9% of participants did not report using that strategy in Session 1 but reported changing to it in Session 2 after receiving the hint. Their responses in Session 2 were slower than those who used the strategy throughout, but this difference was minimal in the last two trial blocks. Compatible mapping of the salient spoon tip to keypresses dominated performance over prior practice with incompatible tip mapping and instructions with incompatible handle mapping.

Does Perceptual Simulation Explain Spatial Effects in Word Categorization?

In three experiments we investigated the origin of the effects of the compatibility between the typical location of entities denoted by written words (e.g., “up” for eagle and “down” for carpet) and either the actual position of the words on the screen (e.g., upper vs. lower part of the screen), or the response position (e.g., upper- vs. lower- key presses) in binary categorization tasks. Contrary to predictions of the perceptual simulation account (Barsalou, 1999), conceptual spatial compatibility effects observed in the present study (faster RTs when the typical position of the stimulus referent in the real word was compatible with either the stimulus or response physical position) seem to be independent of whether there was an overlap between simulated processes possibly triggered by the presented stimulus and sensory-motor processes actually required by the task. Rather, they appear to depend critically on whether the involved stimulus and/or response dimensions had binary, variable (vs. fixed) values. Notably, no stimulus–stimulus compatibility effect was observed in Experiment 3, when the stimulus physical position was presented in a blocked design (i.e., it was kept constant within each block of trials). In contrast, in all three experiments, a compatibility effect between response position and another (non-spatial) conceptual dimension of the stimulus (i.e., its semantic category) was observed (i.e., an effect analogous to the MARC [linguistic markedness of response codes] effect, which is usually observed in the number domain; Nuerk et al., 2004). This pattern of results is fully accounted for by the polarity principle, according to which these effects originate from the alignment of the polarities of either different stimulus dimensions or stimulus and response dimensions.