title: Reducing and restoring stimulus-response compatibility effects by decreasing the discriminability of location words.
abstract: In two experiments, we compared level of activation and temporal overlap accounts of compatibility effects in the Simon task by reducing the discriminability of spatial and non-spatial features of a target location word. Participants made keypress responses to the non-spatial or spatial feature of centrally presented location words. The discriminability of the spatial feature of the word (Experiment 1), or of both the spatial and non-spatial feature (Experiment 2), was manipulated. When the spatial feature of the word was task-irrelevant, lowering the discriminability of this feature reduced the compatibility effect. The compatibility effect was restored when the discriminability of both the task-relevant and task-irrelevant features were reduced together. Results provide further evidence for the temporal overlap account of compatibility effects. Furthermore, compatibility effects when the spatial information was task-relevant and those when the spatial information was task-irrelevant were moderately correlated with each other, suggesting a common underlying mechanism in both versions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, 703 Third St., W. Lafayette, IN 47907-2081, United States. jmiles@purdue.edu
authors.forename: James D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Miles
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Proctor
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001245:Association Learning; D003118:Color Perception; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult