title: The role of effect grouping in free-choice response selection.
abstract: Which motor actions are preferred to replace an initially planned but momentary not executable action? Previous research (Khan, Mourton, Buckolz, Adams, & Hayes, 2010, Acta Psychologica) suggests that anatomical constraints seem to be a major determinant for such choices: For example, participants more frequently chose to respond with the finger homologous to the prepared one. We argue that in this case finger homology is confounded with action effect similarity, and action effects have been ascribed a crucial role in action selection. We report two experiments. Experiment 1 replicated the results obtained by Khan et al. In Experiment 2, we introduced visual action effects in the paradigm. Results from this experiment clearly point to a role of effect similarity in addition to mere finger homology status for the choice frequency effect.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology III, Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, Germany. Electronic address: markus.janczyk@uni-wuerzburg.de.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Janczyk
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology III, Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Wilfried
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Kunde
mesh_terms: D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Action effects; Finger homology; Forced-choice; Free-choice; Ideomotor theory