Differences in performance with various stimulus-response mappings are among the most prevalent findings for binary choice reaction tasks. The authors show that perceptual or conceptual similarity is not necessary to obtain mapping effects; a type of structural similarity is sufficient. Specifically, stimulus and response alternatives are coded as positive and negative polarity along several dimensions, and polarity correspondence is sufficient to produce mapping effects. The authors make the case for this polarity correspondence principle using the literature on word-picture verification and then provide evidence that polarity correspondence is a determinant of mapping effects in orthogonal stimulus-response compatibility, numerical judgment, and implicit association tasks. The authors conclude by discussing implications of this principle for interpretation of results from binary choice tasks and future model development.

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The present study tested whether coding of tone pitch relative to a referent contributes to the correspondence effect between the pitch height of an auditory stimulus and the location of a lateralized response. When left-right responses are mapped to high or low pitch tones, performance is better with the high-right/low-left mapping than with the opposite mapping, a phenomenon called the horizontal SMARC effect. However, when pitch height is task irrelevant, the horizontal SMARC effect occurs only for musicians. In Experiment 1, nonmusicians performed a pitch discrimination task, and the SMARC effect was evident regardless of whether a referent tone was presented. However, in Experiment 2, for a timbre-judgment task, nonmusicians showed a SMARC effect only when a referent tone was presented, whereas musicians showed a SMARC effect that did not interact with presence/absence of the referent. Dependence of the SMARC effect for nonmusicians on a reference tone was replicated in Experiment 3, in which judgments of the color of a visual stimulus were made in the presence of a concurrent high- or low-pitched pure tone. These results suggest that referential coding of pitch height is a key determinant for the horizontal SMARC effect when pitch height is irrelevant to the task.

Stroop dilution is the reduction of the Stroop effect in the presence of a neutral word. It has been attributed to competition for attention between the color word and neutral word, to competition between all stimuli in the visual field, and to perceptual interference. Five experiments tested these accounts. The critical manipulation was whether the color to be named was carried by the color word or the neutral word. Neutral words diluted the Stroop effect when they were the color carrier, but not when the color word was the color carrier. We argue that Stroop dilution is due to attentional competition between the color word and neutral word, with priority given to the color carrier.

BackgroundCertain facial configurations are believed to be associated with distinct affective meanings (i.e. basic facial expressions), and such associations are common across cultures (i.e. universality of facial expressions). However, recently, many studies suggest that various types of contextual information, rather than facial configuration itself, are important factor for facial emotion perception.Methodology/Principal FindingsTo examine systematically how contextual information influences individuals’ facial emotion perception, the present study estimated direct observers’ perceptual thresholds for detecting negative facial expressions via a forced-choice psychophysical procedure using faces embedded in various emotional contexts. We additionally measured the individual differences in affective information-processing tendency (BIS/BAS) as a possible factor that may determine the extent to which contextual information on facial emotion perception is used. It was found that contextual information influenced observers' perceptual thresholds for facial emotion. Importantly, individuals’ affective-information tendencies modulated the extent to which they incorporated context information into their facial emotion perceptions.Conclusions/SignificanceThe findings of this study suggest that facial emotion perception not only depends on facial configuration, but the context in which the face appears as well. This contextual influence appeared differently with individual’s characteristics of information processing. In summary, we conclude that individual character traits, as well as facial configuration and the context in which a face appears, need to be taken into consideration regarding facial emotional perception.

Unimanual left-right responses to up-down stimuli show a stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect for which the preferred mapping varies as a function of response eccentricity. Responses made in the right hemispace and, to a lesser extent, at a midline position, are faster with the up-right/down-left mapping than with the up-left/down-right mapping, but responses made in the left hemispace are faster with the up-left/down-right mapping. Also, for responses at the midline position, the preferred mapping switches when the hand is placed in a supine posture instead of the more usual prone posture. The response eccentricity effect can be explained in terms of correspondence of asymmetrically coded stimulus and response features, but it is not obvious whether the hand posture effect can be explained in a similar manner. The present study tested the implications of a hypothesis that the body of the hand provides a frame of reference with respect to which the response switch is coded as left or right. As was predicted by this hand referent hypothesis, Experiment 1 showed that the influence of hand posture (prone and supine) on orthogonal SRC was additive with that of response location. In Experiment 2, the location of the switch relative to the hand was varied by having subjects use either a normal grip in which the switch was held between the thumb and the index finger or a grip in which it was held between the little and the ring fingers. The magnitudes of the mapping preferences varied as a function of the grip and hand posture in a manner consistent with the hand referent hypothesis.

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