Spatial S-R compatibility: Positional instruction vs. compatibility instruction

doi:10.1016/0001-6918(94)90017-5

Acta Psychologica

Volume 85, Issue 1, February 1994, Pages 15-24

https://doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(94)90017-5 Get rights and content

Abstract

Subjects had to perform both in a classical spatial compatibility experiment where they were instructed to press a right or left button to a right or left stimulus (‘positional instruction’), and in a variant, where they had to give a spatially compatible or incompatible response depending on the color of the stimulus (‘compatibility instruction’). The result shows the normal advantage of compatible over incompatible responses for the experiment with positional instruction whereas the spatial compatibility effect completely disappeared for the experiment with compatibility instruction. This supports a translation hypothesis and speaks against an automatic activation hypothesis of spatial stimulus-response compatibility.

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Cited by (28)

To imitate or not: Avoiding imitation involves preparatory inhibition of motor resonance
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Citation Excerpt :
This preparatory suppression manifests behaviorally as reduced compatibility effects in the unknown mapping trials: the compatible response no longer benefits from automatic response activation making compatible and incompatible reaction times similar. In the alternative, more common scenario—when the required mapping is known before the stimulus—the automatic response route is suppressed selectively for incompatible trials, so that compatible trials have a speed advantage due to automatic response activation (De Jong, 1995; Heister and Schroeder-Heister, 1994; Shaffer, 1965; Vu and Proctor, 2004). When extended to imitation, this model of SRC suggests that the MNS may be suppressed in order to avoid imitation when it is likely to interfere with motor responses.
Stimulus–response compatibility (SRC)—the fact that some stimulus–response pairs are faster than others—is attributed in part to automatic activation of the stimulus–compatible response representation. Cognitive models of SRC propose that automatic response activation can be strategically suppressed if the automatic response is likely to interfere with behavior; in particular, suppression is thought to occur in preparation for incompatible responses and when the required stimulus–response mapping is unknown before stimulus presentation. We test this preparatory suppression hypothesis in the context of imitation, a special form of SRC particularly relevant to human social behavior. Using TMS, we measured muscle-specific corticospinal excitability during action observation (motor resonance) while human participants prepared to perform imitative and counterimitative responses to action videos. Motor resonance was suppressed during preparation to counterimitate and for unknown mappings, compared to preparation to imitate and a baseline measure of motor resonance. These results provide novel neurophysiological evidence that automatic activation of stimulus–compatible responses can be strategically suppressed when the automatic response is likely to interfere with task goals. Insofar as motor resonance measures mirror neuron system activity, these results also suggest that preparatory control of automatic imitative tendencies occurs through modulation of mirror neuron system activity.
Age differences in response selection for pure and mixed stimulus-response mappings and tasks
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Citation Excerpt :
With one variation of this procedure, compatible and incompatible trials are mixed within a trial block, and a mapping signal indicates which mapping is appropriate for any given trial. The mapping signal can be a nonspatial stimulus feature such as the horizontal or vertical orientation of a centered line (Shaffer, 1965) or the color of the stimulus (Heister & Schroeder-Heister, 1994; Vu & Proctor, 2004). With mixed mappings, participants must maintain representations of both location mappings in working memory, identify the mapping signal, choose the representation that is appropriate for the current trial, switch the task set to that mapping if it is different from the mapping on the previous trial, and apply the mapping to select the correct response.
Two experiments examined effects of mixed stimulus–response mappings and tasks for older and younger adults. In Experiment 1, participants performed two-choice spatial reaction tasks with blocks of pure and mixed compatible and incompatible mappings. In Experiment 2, a compatible or incompatible mapping was mixed with a Simon task for which the mapping of stimulus color to location was relevant and stimulus location was irrelevant. In both experiments, older adults showed larger mixing costs than younger adults and larger compatibility effects, with the differences particularly pronounced in Experiment 1 when location mappings were mixed. In mixed conditions, when stimulus location was relevant, older adults benefited more than younger adults from complete repetition of the task and stimulus from the preceding trial. When stimulus location was irrelevant, the benefit of complete repetition did not differ reliably between age groups. The results suggest that the age-related deficit associated with mixing mappings and tasks is primarily due to older adults having more difficulty separating task sets that activate conflicting response codes.
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Spatial S-R compatibility: Positional instruction vs. compatibility instruction

Abstract

Acta Psychologica

Acta Psychologica

Neuropsychologia

Acta Psychologica

Acta Psychologica

Acta Psychologica

Processing symbolic information from a visual display: Interference from an irrelevant directional cue

Journal of Experimental Psychology

‘Association’ and ‘Decision’: S-R compatibility in choice reaction tasks

Spatial visuomotor compatibility as a function of retinal eccentricity (Abstract)

Perception

S-R compatibility: Spatial characteristics of stimulus and response codes

Journal of Experimental Psychology

Identifikation verschiedener Kompatibilitätstypen bei komplexen Wahlreaktionsexperimenten

Stimulus-response compatibility and the Simon effect: Toward a conceptual clarification

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance

Spatial S-R compatibility effects with unimanual two-finger choice reactions for prone and supine hand positions

Perception & Psychophysics