Response-effect compatibility in manual choice reaction tasks.

Abstract

This study investigated whether compatibility between responses and their consistent sensorial effects influences performance in manual choice reaction tasks. In Experiment 1 responses to the nonspatial stimulus attribute of color were affected by the correspondence between the location of responses and the location of their visual effects. In Experiment 2, a comparable influence was found with nonspatial responses of varying force and nonspatial response effects of varying auditory intensity. Experiment 3 ruled out the hypothesis that acquired stimulus-effect associations may account for this influence of response-effect compatibility. In sum, the results show that forthcoming response effects influence response selection as if these effects were already sensorially present, suggesting that in line with the classical ideomotor theory, anticipated response effects play a substantial role in response selection.

Action selection by temporally distal goal states

“…Note that both conditions employ the same stimuli and the same responses, and only differ regarding the action effect-which occurs only after the RT has already been measured. Similar findings have been made for other dimensions, such as response and effect intensity (Kunde, 2001;Paelecke & Kunde, 2007), rotations (Janczyk, Yamaguchi, Proctor, & Pfister, 2015), continuous lever movements , facial expressions (Kunde, Lozo, & Neumann, 2011), and semantic overlaps between color words and actual colors (Koch & Kunde, 2002) or number words and numbers (Badets, Koch, & Toussaint, 2013), and action effects also play a role in dual-task performance (Janczyk, 2016;Janczyk, Pfister, Hommel, & Kunde, 2014).…”

“…Starting with Kunde (2001), much research has provided evidence for this assertion, by showing that even events occurring after a response has been given (and thus after the RT has been measured) can influence RTs. In particular, the REC paradigm makes use of the dimensional overlap between the response features and features of the immediately occurring action effects, and the REC effect describes longer RTs when both are incompatible than when both are compatible.…”

“…Twenty-six of the participants were right-handed. In the absence of prior work with multiple action effects, the sample size was based on a consideration of the prior work, in which smaller samples seem more common (e.g., Kunde, 2001;Wirth, Pfister, Janczyk, & Kunde, 2015).…”

“…Ideomotor theory, dating back to the 19th-century philosophers (e.g., Harleß, 1861;Herbart, 1825;James, 1890;see Pfister & Janczyk, 2012, or Stock & Stock, 2004, for historical notes), in fact ascribes to action effects a generative role: Their anticipation is what selects the corresponding bodily movement suited to produce the actual effect (see also Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001). Evidence for this has been provided with the response-effect compatibility (REC) paradigm (Kunde, 2001). In a standard experiment, participants respond to (nonspatial) stimuli with a left or right keypress in two blocked conditions: In a response-effect (R-E) compatible condition, this keypress triggers a visual action effect at a spatially corresponding location (e.g., pressing the left key produces a visual effect on the left side of the screen).…”

“…The present experiment and predictions We adopted a typical spatial REC paradigm with manual left/right keypress responses and left-/right-occurring visual action effects (e.g., Kunde, 2001;Pfister & Kunde, 2013). To direct attention to the visual action effects, on a small proportion of all trials the usually white action effects turned yellow.…”