Action consequences affect the space-time congruency effect on reaction time

Abstract

According to the metaphoric mapping hypothesis, people code time in terms of space. Consistent with this hypothesis, several reaction time studies have demonstrated that participants respond faster with a left (right) response to stimuli that convey temporal information about the past (future) than when this stimulus-response mapping is reversed (past → right, future → left). The present experiment examines whether the side of the response key or of the (visual) action effect elicited by the response is the crucial factor of this space-time congruency effect. In a response-effect (R-E) compatible group, a response to a temporal stimulus produced a visual action effect on the same side as the response location (left response → left action effect, right response → right action effect). In an R-E incompatible group, however, response and action effect occurred on opposite sides (left response → right action effect, right response → left action effect). A typical space-time congruency effect was obtained in the R-E compatible group, but the congruency effect interacted with group and was descriptively reversed in the R-E incompatible group. This result pattern suggests that the typical congruency effect is determined by the location of the action consequences rather than the location of the response key. Based on this result, we suggest that the space-time congruency effect is based on an abstract spatial mental representation that embraces action events in the external space.