Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Jägerstr. 17-19, 52066 Aachen, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2011 Nov;75(6):491-8. doi: 10.1007/s00426-011-0353-4. Epub 2011 Aug 21.
Input-output (I-O) modality compatibility refers to the similarity of stimulus modality and modality of response-related sensory consequences. A previous study found higher switch costs in task switching in I-O modality incompatible tasks (auditory-manual and visual-vocal) than in I-O modality compatible tasks (auditory-vocal and visual-manual). However, these tasks had spatially compatible S-R mappings, which implied dimensional overlap (DO). DO may have led to automatic activation of the corresponding compatible responses in the incorrect response modality, thus increasing interference effects. The present study was aimed to examine the influence of DO on I-O modality compatibility effects. In two experiments, we found that I-O modality compatibility affects task switching even in tasks without DO, which even tended to result in further increased modality influences. This finding suggests that I-O modality mappings affect response selection by affecting between-task cross-talk not on the level of specific response codes but on the level of modality-specific processing pathways.
输入-输出（I-O）模态兼容性是指刺激模态和与响应相关的感觉后果的模态之间的相似性。先前的一项研究发现，在 I-O 模态不兼容任务（听觉-手动和视觉-声音）中，任务转换的切换成本高于 I-O 模态兼容任务（听觉-声音和视觉-手动）。然而，这些任务具有空间兼容的 S-R 映射，这意味着维度重叠（DO）。DO 可能导致相应的兼容反应在错误的反应模态中自动激活，从而增加干扰效应。本研究旨在检验 DO 对 I-O 模态兼容性效应的影响。在两项实验中，我们发现即使在没有 DO 的任务中，I-O 模态兼容性也会影响任务转换，甚至可能导致模态影响进一步增加。这一发现表明，I-O 模态映射通过影响任务间的串扰来影响反应选择，而不是在特定反应代码的水平上，而是在模态特定的处理途径的水平上。
