Psychology Department, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA, 90840, USA.
Psychol Res. 2012 Nov;76(6):777-91. doi: 10.1007/s00426-011-0378-8. Epub 2011 Sep 11.
Responses are more efficient when their spatial mappings with features of targets are compatible compared to when they are incompatible, even when those features are irrelevant to task performance. Currently, a debate exists as to whether spatial information conveyed by different stimulus modes leads to qualitatively different spatial representations. We investigated the relations between three of the most commonly used spatial stimulus modes-arrows, locations, and location words-using correlations of compatibility effects between each of these modes as well as compatibility effects at different segments of their response time distributions. Our results show that when spatial information is irrelevant to task performance (the Simon task), the compatibility effects elicited by arrows and words are more strongly related with each other than with those of locations. However, when spatial information is task relevant (the stimulus-response compatibility SRC task), the compatibility effects elicited by arrows and locations are more related, and both are less related to the effect elicited by words. We suggest that these changing relations between stimulus modes are strategically determined based on which spatial coding technique for arrows is most advantageous to task performance. Furthermore, the varying relations between these spatial compatibility effects indicate that the compatibility effect with one stimulus mode is not always predictive of the compatibility effect in another mode.
当刺激的空间映射与目标特征兼容时，反应会更加高效，而当它们不兼容时则会降低效率，即使这些特征与任务表现无关也是如此。目前，人们对于不同刺激模式所传达的空间信息是否会导致截然不同的空间表示存在争议。我们使用这些模式之间的兼容性效应以及它们的反应时分布的不同段之间的兼容性效应的相关性，研究了三种最常用的空间刺激模式（箭头、位置和位置词）之间的关系。我们的结果表明，当空间信息与任务表现无关（Simon 任务）时，箭头和单词引起的兼容性效应彼此之间的相关性比与位置的相关性更强。然而，当空间信息与任务相关（刺激-反应兼容性 SRC 任务）时，箭头和位置引起的兼容性效应更相关，而这两者与单词引起的效应相关性都较低。我们认为，这些刺激模式之间关系的变化是基于哪种箭头的空间编码技术对任务表现最有利而战略性地确定的。此外，这些空间兼容性效应之间的变化关系表明，一种刺激模式的兼容性效应并不总是可以预测另一种模式的兼容性效应。
