Xiong Aiping, Proctor Robert W
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2016 Jan;42(1):23-38. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000117. Epub 2015 Aug 17.
The Simon effect for left-right visual stimuli previously has been shown to decrease across the reaction time (RT) distribution. This decrease has been attributed to automatic activation of the corresponding response, which then dissipates over time. In contrast, for left-right tone stimuli, the Simon effect has not been found to decrease across the RT distribution but instead tends to increase. It has been proposed that automatic activation occurs through visuomotor information transmission, whereas the auditory Simon effect reflects cognitive coding interference and not automatic activation. In 4 experiments, we examined distributions of the auditory Simon effect for RT, percentage error (PE), and an inverse efficiency score [IES = RT/(1 - PE)] as a function of tone frequency and duration to determine whether the activation-dissipation account is also applicable to auditory stimuli. Consistent decreasing functions were found for the RT Simon effect distribution with short-duration tones of low frequency and for the PE and IES Simon effect distributions for all durations and frequency sets. Together, these findings provide robust evidence that left and right auditory stimuli also produce decreasing Simon effect distribution functions suggestive of automatic activation and dissipation of the corresponding response.
先前的研究表明，左右视觉刺激的西蒙效应会在反应时（RT）分布中降低。这种降低归因于相应反应的自动激活，随后该激活会随时间消散。相比之下，对于左右音调刺激，未发现西蒙效应在RT分布中降低，反而往往会增加。有人提出，自动激活是通过视觉运动信息传递发生的，而听觉西蒙效应反映的是认知编码干扰，而非自动激活。在4个实验中，我们研究了RT、错误率（PE）以及逆效率得分[IES = RT/(1 - PE)]的听觉西蒙效应分布，作为音调频率和时长的函数，以确定激活-消散模型是否也适用于听觉刺激。对于低频短时长音调的RT西蒙效应分布以及所有时长和频率组合的PE和IES西蒙效应分布，均发现了一致的递减函数。总之，这些发现提供了有力证据，表明左右听觉刺激也会产生递减的西蒙效应分布函数，这表明相应反应存在自动激活和消散。
