Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 112, Issue 3, March 2003, Pages 259-278
Acta Psychologica

Display-control arrangement correspondence and logical recoding in the Hedge and Marsh reversal of the Simon effect

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0001-6918(02)00125-7Get rights and content

Abstract

When left and right keypresses are made to stimuli in left and right locations, and stimulus location is irrelevant to the task, responses are typically faster when stimulus location corresponds with response location than when it does not (the Simon effect). This effect reverses when the relevant stimulus–response mapping is incompatible, with responses being slower when stimulus and response locations correspond (the Hedge and Marsh reversal). Simon et al. (Acta Psychol. 47 (1981) 63) reported an exception to the Hedge and Marsh reversal for a situation in which the relevant stimulus dimension was the color of a centered visual stimulus and the irrelevant location information was left or right tone location. In contrast, similar experiments have found a reversal of the Simon effect for tone location when relevant visual locations were mapped incompatibly to responses. We conducted four experiments to investigate this discrepancy. Both results were replicated. With an incompatible mapping, irrelevant tone location showed a small reverse Simon effect when the relevant visual dimension was physical location but not when the color of a centered stimulus or the direction in which an arrow pointed conveyed the visual location information. The reversal occurred in a more standard Hedge and Marsh task in which the irrelevant dimension was location of the colored stimulus, but only when the response keys were visibly labeled. Several of the results suggest that display-control arrangement correspondence is the primary cause of the Hedge and Marsh reversal, with logical recoding playing only a secondary role.

Introduction

Simon and his colleagues reported a series of studies showing that when stimuli occur in left or right locations, and stimulus location is irrelevant to the task, responses are faster when the stimulus and response locations correspond than when they do not (see Simon, 1990 for a review). For example, if a left keypress is to be made to a red stimulus and a right keypress to a green stimulus, responses to red stimuli are faster when they occur in the left location rather than in the right location, and vice versa for responses to green stimuli. Hedge and Marsh (1975) called this correspondence effect between irrelevant stimulus location and response location the Simon effect, and this name has been used ever since to refer to the effect.

The Simon effect has generated considerable interest, particularly in the past decade (see, e.g., Hommel & Prinz, 1997), because, as the task is defined for the participant, there is no reason to translate information about stimulus position into a response. Most research has indicated that the Simon effect is a consequence of spatial codes formed automatically at stimulus onset. These spatial codes are presumed to exert their influence primarily through activation of the response that corresponds with the stimulus location (e.g., De Jong, Liang, & Lauber, 1994; Umiltà & Nicoletti, 1990). A focus of much research has been the conditions under which the effect occurs, and how and why the spatial codes are produced (see Hommel & Prinz, 1997; Lu & Proctor, 1995).

One of the most interesting findings regarding the Simon effect is a reversal reported by Hedge and Marsh (1975). They modified the Simon task so that the response keys were labeled by the stimulus colors. Participants performed with a compatible mapping of stimulus color to response color (press the red key to the red stimulus and the green key to the green stimulus) or an incompatible mapping (press the green key to the red stimulus and the red key to the green stimulus). The compatible mapping of stimulus–response (S–R) colors yielded the standard Simon effect, that is, faster responses when stimulus and response locations corresponded than when they did not. However, the incompatible mapping yielded a reverse Simon effect, that is, faster responses when stimulus and response locations did not correspond than when they did. This “Hedge and Marsh reversal” has been replicated consistently for both visual and auditory stimuli (e.g., Arend & Wandmacher, 1987; De Jong et al., 1994; Hasbroucq & Guiard, 1991; Hommel, 1995; Lu & Proctor, 1994; Ragot & Fiori, 1994; Ragot & Guiard, 1992).

Hedge and Marsh (1975) attributed the reverse Simon effect obtained with the incompatible S–R color mapping to logical recoding: misapplication of a reversal rule (respond with the opposite of the stimulus value) to the irrelevant stimulus dimension. For example, the “respond opposite” rule would yield “left” when the stimulus occurred in the right location, facilitating responding if the correct response was left and interfering if it was right. Simon, Sly, and Vilapakkam (1981) proposed an alternative explanation of the Hedge and Marsh reversal in terms of what they called display-control arrangement correspondence. Such correspondence exists when the location of the color stimulus corresponds with the location of the same color control. With a reverse S–R color mapping, display-control correspondence would be present on those trials for which the stimulus location and response location were incongruent and not on those trials for which they were congruent. Hasbroucq and Guiard (1991) proposed a third explanation, which attributes the effect to stimulus identification rather than to response selection. According to them, a stimulus color comes to signify the same-color response location, for example, a red stimulus signifies right if the right key is labeled red. Because red signifies “right”, there is no conflict in stimulus identification when the red stimulus occurs in the right location but conflict when it occurs in the left location, regardless of whether the color S–R mapping is compatible or incompatible. There has been disagreement as to which of these accounts is correct, but the evidence to date has tended to favor the logical recoding account proposed initially by Hedge and Marsh (De Jong et al., 1994; Lu & Proctor, 1994).

One exception to the widespread finding of the Hedge and Marsh reversal is a study by Simon, Acosta, and Mewaldt, (1975). In their experiment an auditory warning tone of 200 Hz was presented in the left ear, right ear, or both ears. This was followed after a delay of 200 or 400 ms by presentation of a 500 Hz tone in the left or right ear. The participant was to respond to this tone by pressing a left or right response key. For half the participants the mapping of the stimulus tones to responses was spatially compatible, whereas for the other half it was spatially incompatible. The results showed no Simon effect for warning-tone location and response location on reaction time (RT) when the S–R mapping was compatible and a positive Simon effect when the mapping was incompatible. That is, with the incompatible mapping, RT was faster when the warning and response locations corresponded than when they did not. This is in contrast to the reverse effect that typically is found for an incompatible mapping of the relevant S–R information with the Hedge and Marsh procedure.

Proctor and Pick (1998) attempted to replicate Simon et al.’s (1975) findings, following their method closely, but were not able to do so. Specifically, with a compatible mapping of tone stimuli to responses, responses were faster when the location of the warning tone corresponded with that of the response than when it did not. With an incompatible mapping, responses were faster when the location of the warning tone did not correspond with that of the response than when it did. Similar effects, though of small magnitude, were obtained in a second experiment in which the warning was still a tone but the imperative stimulus was the visual position (left or right of fixation). Proctor and Pick’s results indicate that the warning variant of the Simon task seems to yield the standard findings of a positive Simon effect when the mapping is spatially compatible and a reversed effect when it is spatially incompatible.

Simon et al. (1981) reported another exception to the finding of a reverse Simon effect with incompatible S–R mappings. In their Experiment 3, participants responded to a red or green centrally presented visual stimulus by moving their right hand from a home key to a red or green key, located to the left or right of the home key. Simultaneous with the onset of the visual stimulus, an irrelevant tone occurred in the left or right ear. As would be expected, participants who performed with a compatible mapping of stimulus color to response color showed a positive Simon effect. However, participants who performed with an incompatible mapping showed no Simon effect, either positive or negative. Simon et al. interpreted the absence of a reversal when the irrelevant location information was conveyed auditorily as evidence against the logical recoding hypothesis and support for the display-control arrangement correspondence hypothesis. That is, the reversal rule would seem to apply to the irrelevant tone location information as it does to irrelevant visual location information, thus predicting a reversal. However, because the visual stimulus is in the center of the screen, display-control arrangement correspondence is not a factor, implying an absence of effect, as was obtained.

The absence of the Hedge and Marsh reversal with centered color stimuli and irrelevant tone location in Simon et al.’s (1981) study thus is of considerable theoretical importance. However, not only is the finding discrepant from that obtained when the irrelevant and relevant stimulus information is conveyed within the same modality by a single object, but it is also counter to the findings obtained with relevant visual stimuli and irrelevant tone locations in Proctor and Pick’s (1998) Experiment 2. Proctor and Pick’s experiment differed from Simon et al.’s primarily in that the relevant visual stimulus information was also location. But, in this case, tone location produced a reverse Simon effect when the visual stimuli were mapped incompatibly to the responses. Stoffels, van der Molen, and Keuss (1985, Experiment 2) also found a small reverse Simon effect for irrelevant tones when the relevant stimuli were lights in left and right locations.

Because the absence of the Hedge and Marsh reversal with centered color stimuli and irrelevant tone location in Simon et al.’s (1981) Experiment 3 is the strongest evidence in favor of display-control arrangement correspondence and against logical recoding (O’Leary, Barber, & Simon, 1994), it is important to ensure that this finding is replicable. If so, the question remains as to why the reversal is absent when the relevant visual information is the color of a centered stimulus but present when it is stimulus location. Determining the conditions under which the Hedge and Marsh reversal does and does not occur is important not only for explanations of the phenomenon but also for understanding response selection in general. Therefore, we conducted four experiments with the purpose of evaluating the nature of the Hedge and Marsh reversal.

Section snippets

Experiment 1

Experiment 1 was designed to determine whether the relevant visual dimension, left–right location or color of a centered stimulus, is crucial to the different patterns of results reported by Proctor and Pick (1998) and Simon et al. (1981). Performance with compatible and incompatible mappings was examined for both location and color tasks. The location task was similar to that of Proctor and Pick’s Experiment 2, except that the irrelevant tone occurred simultaneously with the visual position

Experiment 2

Because the lack of reversal of the Simon effect for tone location with an incompatible S–R color mapping is of considerable theoretical importance, we conducted a replication of the colored stimulus condition in Experiment 2. We also included a more standard Hedge and Marsh task in which the relevant stimulus dimension was color and the irrelevant dimension was the location of that stimulus. The purpose of including the latter condition was to determine whether we could obtain the Hedge and

Experiment 3

The failure to obtain the Hedge and Marsh reversal when location of the visual stimulus was the irrelevant information suggests that visible color labels may be necessary to obtain the reversal when a constant incompatible color mapping is in effect, as Simon et al.’s (1981) account implies. It also opens up the possibility that the failure to obtain the reversal when auditory location was the irrelevant information occurred for a similar reason. If so, there would be nothing unique about the

Experiment 4

Although there is no Simon effect, positive or negative, when tone location varies randomly and the relevant information is the color of a centered visual stimulus (Experiments 1–3), there is a small reverse Simon effect when the relevant information is the location of a visual stimulus (Experiment 1; Proctor & Pick, 1998, Experiment 2; Stoffels et al., 1985, Experiment 2). At least two possibly crucial factors differentiate the stimuli in these two conditions. For one situation the relevant

General discussion

Hedge and Marsh’s (1975) findings of a reverse Simon effect with an incompatible mapping of stimulus colors to response colors has attracted a lot of interest because it violates the principle that responses are faster when stimulus and response locations correspond than when they do not. According to their logical recoding hypothesis, the reversal is due to misapplication of a “respond opposite” rule to the irrelevant stimulus location dimension. However, this explanation was challenged by

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Bernhard Hommel, Maurits van der Molen, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References (19)

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