The Simon effect based on the egocentric and allocentric reference frame

Abstract

The classic Simon effect refers to the phenomenon that responses are faster when the task-irrelevant egocentric stimulus location is on the same side as the response hand than when not. However, the spatial location of an object often varies according to which reference frame the object location was represented in, e.g., egocentric versus allocentric reference frame. It has been unknown, however, whether and how the Simon effect based on the egocentric and the allocentric reference interact, and whether the potential interaction between them is affected by task demands. To investigate these questions, we orthogonally crossed the stimulus-response compatibility induced by the egocentric and the allocentric positions during the Simon effect. Moreover, the irrelevant egocentric and allocentric positions were either explicitly represented via interleaving spatial and non-spatial tasks in Experiment 1 or not in Experiment 2. The results suggested that the Simon effect based on the egocentric locations occurred irrespective of whether the egocentric representations were explicitly coded based on current task demands or not. The Simon effect based on allocentric locations, however, seemed to occur only when the allocentric representations were explicitly induced. Moreover, the egocentric and allocentric Simon effect interacted in a similar way irrespective of task demands, with significantly delayed responses when both the egocentric and the allocentric locations were incongruent with the response code.

Conflict processing among multiple frames of reference

“…This is similar to the Simon effect, in which opposite spatial locations of the stimulus and response hand result in longer RTs than when the spatial information of the stimulus and response is congruent. For comprehensive reviews, see Chen et al (), Liu, Park, Gu, and Fan (), Simon (), Sun and Wang (), and H. Wang et al (). The TCOE suggests that conflicts may occur between an IFOR and an EFOR by leading to different responses for the same target (Sui & Humphreys, ; Sun & Wang, ).…”

The breakdown of the Simon effect in cross‐modal contexts: EEG evidence

“…The Simon effect is a fairly robust phenomenon that occurs with visual (Wallace, ; Riggio et al ., ), auditory (Simon et al ., ; Roswarski & Proctor, ; Röder et al ., ), and tactile (Medina et al ., ; Ruzzoli & Soto‐Faraco, ) stimuli, thus providing a reliable protocol for testing how task‐irrelevant stimulus features (i.e., space) affect responses in different sensory modalities and, more generally, how spatial information is represented in the brain (Proctor & Lu, ; Hommel, ). Accordingly, it has been found that the reference frame in which spatial information is represented is strongly dependent of stimulus modality (Wallace, ; Riggio et al ., ; Hommel, ; Medina et al ., ; Wang et al ., ; Ruzzoli & Soto‐Faraco, ). In vision and in audition, S‐R compatibility abides by an external reference frame, so that the relevant matching is between the position of the stimulus and the position of the response goal (Wallace, ; Riggio et al ., ).…”

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

“…Another set of studies followed a different procedure (“same-object-approach”) by enriching the stimulus setup through embedding the critical stimulus into a more global object ( Wang et al, 2016 ; Baess and Bermeitinger, unpublished). For example, Wang et al (2016) presented the critical stimulus, a fork, in combination with another object, here a plate, so that the fork was superimposed on the plate. Participants were required to react to the color of the fork, yet the position of the fork with respect to the plate was completely task-irrelevant.…”