Miles James D, Proctor Robert W
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2011 Oct;64(10):2044-64. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.582130.
It is increasingly popular to use movement trajectories as a measure of mental processes related to task performance. Often this is accomplished by moving a cursor to a target on a computer screen. However, the relation between features of the cursor and the targets is rarely, if at all, considered. In five experiments, we examined whether moving a cursor to a target was affected by the relation between their colours, even when this relation was task irrelevant. In Experiments 1-3, a mouse-controlled cursor was moved to one of two coloured targets. Results showed colour correspondence effects in latency to initiate a response, duration of movement times, and movement trajectories when the relationship between cursor and target colours was task relevant (Experiment 1) and when only the cursor colour was task relevant (Experiment 2), but not when only the target was task relevant (Experiment 3). Follow-up experiments using single targets showed that colour correspondence effects occurred as long as attention was dedicated to the colour of the cursor, even when neither the cursor nor the target colour was relevant to selecting the correct movement (Experiments 4 and 5). Furthermore, when the relation between cursor and target colours is task irrelevant, colour correspondence effects for response initiation times are uncorrelated with those for movement times and movement trajectories. We interpret the observed correspondence effect in terms of response coding, although attention cueing may also play a role, and suggest that greater consideration of cursor features is needed when examining movement trajectories in choice reaction tasks.
使用运动轨迹作为与任务表现相关的心理过程的一种衡量方式越来越流行。通常这是通过在电脑屏幕上移动光标到一个目标来实现的。然而，光标特征与目标之间的关系即便被考虑到，也很少被研究。在五个实验中，我们研究了将光标移动到一个目标是否会受到它们颜色之间关系的影响，即便这种关系与任务无关。在实验1 - 3中，一个由鼠标控制的光标被移动到两个彩色目标中的一个。结果显示，当光标与目标颜色之间的关系与任务相关时（实验1）以及当只有光标颜色与任务相关时（实验2），在启动反应的潜伏期、移动时间的持续时长以及运动轨迹方面存在颜色对应效应，但当只有目标与任务相关时（实验3）则不存在。使用单个目标的后续实验表明，只要注意力集中在光标的颜色上，就会出现颜色对应效应，即便光标和目标颜色都与选择正确的移动无关（实验4和5）。此外，当光标与目标颜色之间的关系与任务无关时，反应启动时间的颜色对应效应与移动时间和运动轨迹的颜色对应效应不相关。我们从反应编码的角度解释观察到的对应效应，尽管注意提示可能也起了作用，并建议在选择反应任务中研究运动轨迹时需要更多地考虑光标特征。
