The functional role of attention for spatial coding in the Simon effect

Stoffer, Thomas H.; Yakin, André R.

doi:10.1007/bf00419702

Cited by 81 publications

(77 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…The finding that central stimulus-location precues do not influence the magnitude of the Simon effect is contradicted by an experiment of Stoffer and Yakin (1994). The general intent of their experiment was the same as that of Hommel's (1993a), with left and right pointing arrows used as precues, but the specific procedure differed in several ways: Precues were of 100% validity, with 22.2% of the trials being catch trials for which a stimulus presented prior to the precue indicated that a response was not to be made; the target stimulus was either a rectangle or a triangle rather than colors, and the SOA between the precue and target onsets was 50, 500, or 700 msec.…”

Section: @]mentioning

confidence: 92%

“…The reduction of the Simon effect obtained by Stoffer and Yakin (1994) with a central stimulus-location precue poses problems for Hommel's (1993a) account of his results in terms of inhibition of spatial coding, because this inhibition should only be present if the precue occurred peripherally at the target location. The attention shifting account can accommodate all of the findings for central and peripheral precues if it is assumed that discriminations of brightness or color do not require a shift of focused attention and that, consequently, attention is not shifted when central precues are used for tasks involving such discriminations.…”

Section: @]mentioning

confidence: 94%

“…To summarize, the results ofthe precuing studies show that the magnitude of the Simon effect is (1) not influenced in many cases by a valid central stimulus-location precue (Hommel, 1993a;Proctor et al, 1992;Verfaellie et al, 1988;with Stoffer & Yakin, 1994, being an exception), (2) decreased by a valid peripheral stimuluslocation precue (Hommel, 1993a;Stoffer & Yakin, 1994), and (3) increased by a central response-location precue (Proctor et al, 1992;Verfaellie et al, 1988). A shortcoming ofthe attention shifting and temporal overlap explanations that have been developed to explain the effects of stimulus-location precues is that they do not consider response expectancy effects.…”

Section: @]mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Hommel suggested that the Simon effect for relative location within the hemispace was absent in his study because the relative location code was formed quickly and then decayed. However, because stimuli can be segregated preattentively on the basis of color (e.g., Treisman & Gelade, 1980), another possibility is that no relative location code was ever formed (see Stoffer & Yakin, 1994, for more discussion ofthis point). Likewise, the possibility exists that the Simon effect may have been completely absent for the rectangle stimuli because neither a location code with respect to relative location nor a location code with respect to hemispace was formed in that task.…”

Section: Relative Processing Speedmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The influence of irrelevant location information on performance: A review of the Simon and spatial Stroop effects

1995

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of irrelevant location information on performance of visual choice-reaction tasks. We review empirical findings and theoretical explanations from two domains, those of the Simon effect and the spatial Stroop effect, in which stimulus location has been shown to affect reaction time when irrelevant to the task. Wethen integrate the findings and explanations from the two domains to clarify how and why stimulus location influences performance even when it is uninformative to the correct response. Factors that influence the processing of irrelevant location information include response modality, relative timing with respect to the relevant information, spatial coding, and allocation of attention. The most promising accounts are offered by models in which response selection is a function of (1) strength of association of the irrelevant stimulus information with the response and (2) temporal overlap of the resulting response activation with that produced by the relevant stimulus information.The role played by stimulus location in visual information processing has been a controversial issue. This issue has been investigated primarily by means ofvisual search tasks in which a target stimulus in an array of distractors must be detected or identified. Reaction time (RT) in such tasks is typically an increasing function ofarray size, and accuracy a decreasing function, when the target is defined by a conjunction of features (e.g., Treisman & Gelade, 1980;Van Zandt & Townsend, 1993), leading some authors to propose that attending to location is necessary for feature integration (e.g., Nissen, 1985;Treisman & Gelade, 1980). As expected if location must be attended in such situations, a stimulus for a second task shows a processing benefit when it occurs in a location adjacent to the target stimulus of the search task rather than in a more remote location (e.g., Hoffman & Nelson, 1981), and precuing the location in the array in which the target stimulus will occur facilitates its processing (e.g., Eriksen & Hoffman, 1972). However, facilitation from a location precue is also apparent when the target is presented alone and requires only a detection response (e.g., Bashinski & Bacharach, 1980;Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980), suggesting that it may be necessary to attend to the locaWe would like to thank Bernhard Hommel, Colin MacLeod, Bob Melara, Jim Neely, Richard Schweickert, Richard Simon, and Howard Zelaznik for helpful comments on previous versions of this manuscript. Reprint requests should be sent to Chen-Hui Lu, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, or Robert W. Proctor, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1364. tion of any stimulus on which a response is based. Consistent with this possibility, Tsal and Lavie (1993) recently showed that when the relevant feature of a precue stimulus is nonspatial (e.g., color), there is still facilitation in the identification of a s...

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Section: @]mentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: @]mentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: @]mentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Relative Processing Speedmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The influence of irrelevant location information on performance: A review of the Simon and spatial Stroop effects

1995

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“…The blocking or gating mechanism is of a similar nature, in that the use of an LTM link is conditional upon the congruency of the preceding trial (Stoffels et al, 1989;Stürmer et al, 2002). Also, the attention shift hypothesis (Notebaert & Soetens, 2003;Notebaert et al, 2001;Stoffer & Yakin, 1994), suggested as an explanation for the regular SE, has been presented as a kind of priming mechanism. Shifting attention spatially in a particular direction is assumed to prime responses located in the same direction.…”

Section: A Bottom-up Priming Mechanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practice-induced and sequential modulations of the Simon effect

Soetens¹,

Maetens²,

Zeischka³

2010

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics

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People react more quickly and more accurately to stimuli presented in locations corresponding to the response, as compared with noncorresponding locations, even when stimulus location is irrelevant (Simon effect [SE]). The explanation that SEs are caused by the automatic priming of a corresponding response has been questioned, because of the many exceptions to the effect. We replicated practice-induced and sequential modulations of the SE in two experiments-first, by training participants with blocks of location-relevant stimuli, and second, by mixing location-relevant and location-irrelevant trials. The decrease of the SE with incompatible training was relatively permanent in the blocked experiment, whereas the effect was temporary in the mixed experiment. The difference was caused by a more permanent reversal of the SE after incongruent trials, showing that sequential modulations depend on long-term practice effects. We suggest that there is a formation of a contralateral longterm memory stimulus-response link in blocked conditions and that short-term and long-term memory links are primed by preceding events.

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Hand-hemispace spatial compatibility, precueing, and stimulus-onset asynchrony

et al. 1994

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The role of attention and the resolution of coding conflicts in hand-hemispace spatial-compatibility effects was examined in a precueing experiment in which visual and vibrotactile precues, with various stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs), were presented in blocked and random order. It was expected that precues at the shorter SOAs would fail to facilitate the shifting of attention, as they occur too close to the imperative stimulus to be informative. The task would therefore approximate one of choice reaction time (RT), resulting in a hand-hemispace spatial-compatibility effect. Conversely, the longer SOAs would provide the subject with sufficient time in which to shift attention fully, and would therefore result in a task more like that of simple reaction time (SRT). It was expected that the hand-hemispace spatial-compatibility effect would then be absent. As was expected, this effect was present at the shorter SOAs, and absent at the longer SOAs. In Experiments 2 and 3, provision of a visual precue further facilitated attentional deployment, as did blocking the presentation of various SOAs in Experiment 3. Vibrotactile and visual precues did not differ in their ability to direct attention, implying that these modalities orient attention and precue location in essentially similar ways. These findings are discussed within the context of the mechanisms though to underlie the time course of spatial compatibility and the dissipation of a fading trace of interfering spatial codes.

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The functional role of attention for spatial coding in the Simon effect

Cited by 81 publications

References 44 publications

The influence of irrelevant location information on performance: A review of the Simon and spatial Stroop effects

The influence of irrelevant location information on performance: A review of the Simon and spatial Stroop effects

Practice-induced and sequential modulations of the Simon effect

Hand-hemispace spatial compatibility, precueing, and stimulus-onset asynchrony

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