Department of Experimental Psychology, Mind, Brain, and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja, s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain.
Psychol Res. 2023 Feb;87(1):242-259. doi: 10.1007/s00426-022-01659-x. Epub 2022 Feb 22.
Arrows and gaze stimuli lead to opposite spatial congruency effects. While standard congruency effects are observed for arrows (faster responses for congruent conditions), responses are faster when eye-gaze stimuli are presented on the opposite side of the gazed-at location (incongruent trials), leading to a reversed congruency effect (RCE). Here, we explored the effects of implicit vs. explicit processing of arrows and eye-gaze direction. Participants were required to identify the direction (explicit task) or the colour (implicit task) of left or right looking/pointing gaze or arrows, presented to either the left or right of the fixation point. When participants responded to the direction of stimuli, standard congruency effects for arrows and RCE for eye-gaze stimuli were observed. However, when participants responded to the colour of stimuli, no congruency effects were observed. These results suggest that it is necessary to explicitly pay attention to the direction of eye-gaze and arrows for the congruency effect to occur. The same pattern of data was observed when participants responded either manually or verbally, demonstrating that manual motor components are not responsible for the results observed. These findings are not consistent with some hypotheses previously proposed to explain the RCE observed with eye-gaze stimuli and, therefore, call for an alternative plausible hypothesis.
箭头和注视刺激导致相反的空间一致效应。虽然标准的一致性效应在箭头中观察到（在一致条件下反应更快），但当眼动注视刺激出现在注视位置的相反侧时（不一致的试验），反应更快，导致反转一致性效应（RCE）。在这里，我们探讨了箭头和眼动方向的内隐和外显处理的影响。要求参与者识别左或右看/指的注视或箭头的方向（外显任务）或颜色（内隐任务），呈现于注视点的左侧或右侧。当参与者对刺激的方向做出反应时，观察到箭头的标准一致性效应和眼动刺激的 RCE。然而，当参与者对刺激的颜色做出反应时，没有观察到一致性效应。这些结果表明，必须明确注意眼动和箭头的方向，才能产生一致性效应。当参与者以手动或口头方式做出反应时，观察到相同的数据模式，这表明手动运动成分不是观察到的结果的原因。这些发现与以前提出的一些假设不一致，这些假设用于解释眼动刺激观察到的 RCE，因此需要一个替代的合理假设。
