Center for Brain and Cognition, Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2017 Oct;146(10):1478-1497. doi: 10.1037/xge0000342. Epub 2017 Jun 22.
The representation of spatial information related to an event can influence behavior even when location is task-irrelevant, as in the case of Stimulus-Response (S-R) compatibility effects on the Simon task. However, unlike single-modality situations, which are often used to study the Simon effect, in real-life scenarios various sensory modalities provide spatial information coded in different coordinate systems. Here, we address the expression of S-R compatibility effects in mixed-modality contexts, where events can occur in 1 of various sensory modalities (i.e., vision, touch or audition). The results confirm that, in single-modality cases, Simon effects in vision are expressed in an external spatial frame of reference, while touch information is coded anatomically. Remarkably, when mixing visual and tactile trials in an unpredictable way, the Simon effect disappeared in vision whereas tactile Simon effects remained expressed in their own (anatomical) frame of reference. Mixing visual and auditory stimuli did not obliterate the visual Simon effect and S-R compatibility effects in an external reference frame were evident for both modalities. The extinction of visual Simon effects as a result of mixing visual and tactile modalities can be interpreted as a consequence of the dynamic reorganization of the weights associated to the different sources of spatial information at play. (PsycINFO Database Record
与事件相关的空间信息的表示即使在位置与任务无关的情况下也会影响行为，就像在西蒙任务中的刺激-反应（S-R）兼容性效应对位置的影响一样。然而，与通常用于研究西蒙效应的单模态情况不同，在现实生活场景中，各种感觉模态提供了以不同坐标系编码的空间信息。在这里，我们研究了混合模态情境中 S-R 兼容性效应的表达，其中事件可以发生在各种感觉模态（即视觉、触觉或听觉）之一中。结果证实，在单模态情况下，视觉中的西蒙效应在外部空间参照系中表现出来，而触觉信息则以解剖学方式编码。值得注意的是，当以不可预测的方式混合视觉和触觉试验时，西蒙效应在视觉中消失，而触觉西蒙效应仍然以其自身的（解剖学）参照系表示。混合视觉和听觉刺激并没有消除视觉西蒙效应，并且对于两种模态，外部参照系中的 S-R 兼容性效应都很明显。由于混合视觉和触觉模态，视觉西蒙效应的消失可以解释为与不同空间信息源相关的权重的动态重新组织的结果。
