Dolk Thomas, Liepelt Roman
Department of Psychology, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
Institute of Psychology, German Sport University Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2018 Oct 25;9:2011. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02011. eCollection 2018.
Numerous studies have shown that stimulus-response-compatibility (SRC) effects in the go-nogo version of the Simon task can be elicited as a result of performing the task together with another human or non-human agent (e.g., a Japanese-waving-cat, a working-clock, or a ticking-metronome). A parsimonious explanation for both social and non-social SRC effects is that highlighting the spatial significance of alternative (non-/social) action events makes action selection more difficult. This holds even when action events are task-irrelevant. Recent findings, however, suggest that this explanation holds only for cases of a modality correspondence between the Simon task as such (i.e., auditory or visual) and the alternative (non-/social) action event that needs to be discriminated. However, based on the fact that perception and action are represented by the same kind of codes, an event that makes the go-nogo decision more challenging should impact go-nogo Simon task performance. To tackle this issue, the present study tested if alternative stimulus events that come from a different sensory modality do impact SRC effects in the go-nogo version of the Simon task. This was tested in the presence and absence of alternative action events of a human co-actor. In a multimodal (auditory-visual) go-nogo Simon paradigm, participants responded to their assigned stimulus - e.g., a single auditory stimulus while ignoring the alternative visual stimulus or vice versa - in the presence or absence of a human co-actor (i.e., joint and single go-nogo condition). Results showed reliable SRCs in both, single and joint go-nogo Simon task conditions independent of the modality participants had to respond to. Although a correspondence between stimulus material and attention-grabbing event might be an efficient condition for SRCs to emerge, the driving force underlying the emergence of SRCs rather appears to be whether the attentional focus prevents or facilitates alternative events to be integrated. Thus, under task conditions in which the attentional focus is sufficiently broad to enable the integration and thus cognitive representation of alternative events, go-nogo decisions become more difficult, resulting in reliable SRCs in single and joint go-nogo Simon tasks.
大量研究表明，在西蒙任务的“是/否”版本中，刺激-反应兼容性（SRC）效应可因与另一个人或非人类主体（如日本招手猫、工作的时钟或滴答作响的节拍器）一起执行任务而引发。对社会和非社会SRC效应的一种简洁解释是，突出替代（非/社会）行动事件的空间意义会使行动选择更加困难。即使行动事件与任务无关，情况也是如此。然而，最近的研究结果表明，这种解释仅适用于西蒙任务本身（即听觉或视觉）与需要区分的替代（非/社会）行动事件之间存在模态对应关系的情况。然而，基于感知和行动由同一种编码表示这一事实，一个使“是/否”决策更具挑战性的事件应该会影响“是/否”西蒙任务的表现。为了解决这个问题，本研究测试了来自不同感觉模态的替代刺激事件是否会影响西蒙任务“是/否”版本中的SRC效应。这在有和没有人类共同行动者的替代行动事件的情况下进行了测试。在多模态（听觉-视觉）“是/否”西蒙范式中，参与者在有或没有人类共同行动者（即联合和单一“是/否”条件）的情况下，对分配给他们的刺激做出反应——例如，对单个听觉刺激做出反应，同时忽略替代视觉刺激，反之亦然。结果表明，在单一和联合“是/否”西蒙任务条件下，无论参与者必须对哪种模态做出反应，都存在可靠的SRC效应。虽然刺激材料与引人注目的事件之间的对应关系可能是SRC效应出现的一个有效条件，但SRC效应出现的驱动力似乎更在于注意力焦点是阻止还是促进替代事件的整合。因此，在注意力焦点足够宽泛以允许替代事件整合并因此进行认知表征的任务条件下，“是/否”决策变得更加困难，导致在单一和联合“是/否”西蒙任务中出现可靠的SRC效应。
