Effects of saccades and response type on the Simon effect: if you look at the stimulus, the Simon effect may be gone.
The Simon effect has most often been investigated with key-press responses and eye fixation. In the present study, we asked how the type of eye movement and the type of manual response affect response selection in a Simon task. We investigated three eye movement instructions (spontaneous, saccade, and fixation) while participants performed goal-directed (i.e., reaching) or symbolic (i.e., finger-lift) responses. Initially, no oculomotor constraints were imposed, and a Simon effect was present for both response types. Next, eye movements were constrained. Participants had to either make a saccade toward the stimulus or maintain gaze fixed in the screen centre. While a congruency effect was always observed in reaching responses, it disappeared in finger-lift responses. We suggest that the redirection of saccades from the stimulus to the correct response location in noncorresponding trials contributes to the Simon effect. Because of eye-hand coupling, this occurred in a mandatory manner with reaching responses but not with finger-lift responses. Thus, the Simon effect with key-presses disappears when participants do what they typically do--look at the stimulus.
Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l'Education, Université de Genève, 40 Boulevard du Pont d’Arve, Geneva, Switzerland. simona.buetti@unige.ch
Simona
S
Buetti
Dirk
D
Kerzel
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult