Sharing Different Reference Frames: How Stimulus Setup and Task Setup Shape Egocentric and Allocentric Simon Effects

Abstract

Different reference frames are used in daily life in order to structure the environment. The two-choice Simon task setting has been used to investigate how task-irrelevant spatial information influences human cognitive control. In recent studies, a Go/NoGo Simon task setting was used in order to divide the Simon task between a pair of participants. Yet, not only a human co-actor, but also even an attention-grabbing object can provide sufficient reference in order to reintroduce a Simon effect (SE) indicating cognitive conflict in Go/NoGo task settings. Interestingly, the SE could only occur when a reference point outside of the stimulus setup was available. The current studies exploited the dependency between different spatial reference frames (egocentric and allocentric) offered by the stimulus setup itself and the task setup (individual vs. joint Go/NoGot task setting). Two studies (Experiments 1 and 2) were carried out along with a human co-actor. Experiment 3 used an attention-grabbing object instead. The egocentric and allocentric SEs triggered by different features of the stimulus setup (global vs. local) were modulated by the task setup. When interacting with a human co-actor, an egocentric SE was found for global features of the stimulus setup (i.e., stimulus position on the screen). In contrast, an allocentric SE was yielded in the individual task setup illustrating the relevance of more local features of the stimulus setup (i.e., the manikin’s ball position). Results point toward salience shifts between different spatial reference frames depending on the nature of the task setup.

What Simon “knows” about cultural differences: The influence of cultural orientation and traffic directionality on spatial compatibility effects

“…The interaction of Display Size and Ball Position Compatibility, indicating differences in the local Simon effect, was non-significant, F(1, 203) = 3.63, p = .058, ƞ p 2 = .018. These results are comparable to those observed in other work of our group with a two-choice Simon task and even comparable to our results found in a Go/No-Go version of this task (Baess et al, 2018).…”

“…Additionally, we used a paradigm with manikins holding colored balls to measure global and local Simon effects. This paradigm has been used in different studies with German samples Baess et al, 2018), which found results identical to the ones of German participants in the present study. To ensure the cultural differences in local and global Simon effects observed in the present study are reliable, other versions of the Simon paradigm, for example one with horizontally aligned reference boxes (for review, , or even other paradigms investigating response selection in spatial tasks, should be employed.…”

“…The stimuli were stick-figure manikins, and the task-relevant feature was the color of a ball (blue or yellow) that each manikin was holding in one hand. This followed the procedure used in other studies in our lab Baess et al, 2018), where using these materials concurrently yielded two kinds of Simon effect: one based on the position of the ball relative to the center of the screen (the "global" Simon effect) and one based on the position of the ball relative to the stick-figure manikin (the "local" Simon effect). We propose that the two types of Simon effect can serve as indicators of different spatial reference frames -a self-centered reference frame anchored at the screen's center (corresponding to the body midline) versus an object-centered reference frame anchored at the stickfigure manikin.…”

“…Two-dimensional drawings of stick-figure manikins (see Fig. 1) holding a colored ball (blue: RGB values 0, 0, 255; yellow: 255, 255, 0) in one hand were used in accordance with previous studies Baess et al, 2018). In the stimulus presentation software, the size of the manikin was set to 89 pixels width (2 cm width on a 16-in.…”

Spatial–numerical associations in the presence of an avatar

“…The idea of using SRC effects to examine other cognitive phenomena is not new (e.g., Hommel, 2011) and has already been used in the context of perspective taking to quantify the influence of a conflicting reference frame, either of a person (Freundlieb, Kovács, & Sebanz, 2016), an avatar (Böffel & Müsseler, 2018, 2019a, b, 2020aMüsseler et al, 2019) or even simple manikins (Baess, Weber, & Bermeitinger, 2018). Because SRC has been shown to be dependent on context and intention (Hommel, 1993;Müsseler, Aschersleben, Arning, & Proctor, 2012), it seems to emerge based on the mental representation of an event, rather than on its mere physical reality.…”