title: Visual versus auditory Simon effect: A behavioural and physiological investigation.
abstract: This study investigated whether the visual and auditory Simon effects could be accounted for by the same mechanism. In a single experiment, we performed a detailed comparison of the visual and the auditory Simon effects arising in behavioural responses and in pupil dilation, a psychophysiological measure considered as a marker of the cognitive effort induced by conflict processing. To address our question, we performed sequential and distributional analyses on both reaction times and pupil dilation. Results confirmed that the mechanisms underlying the visual and auditory Simon effects are functionally equivalent in terms of the interaction between unconditional and conditional response processes. The two modalities, however, differ with respect to the strength of their activation and inhibition. Importantly, pupillary data mirrored the pattern observed in behavioural data for both tasks, adding physiological evidence to the current literature on the processing of visual and auditory information in a conflict task.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Communication and Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy.|2 Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: D'Ascenzo
authors.affiliation: 2 Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Luisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lugli
authors.affiliation: 2 Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Baroni
authors.affiliation: 3 Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, and Institute of Advanced Biomedical Technologies, 'G. D'Annunzio' University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Guidotti
authors.affiliation: 4 Department of Education and Human Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy.
authors.forename: Sandro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rubichi
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Communication and Economics, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy.
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Iani
authors.affiliation: 2 Department of Philosophy and Communication, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Nicoletti
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011680:Pupil / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Simon effect; pupil dilation; reaction time distributions; sequential effects; visual and auditory modalities