Cross-modal compatibility effects with visual-spatial and auditory-verbal stimulus and response sets.

Abstract

Within the visual-spatial and auditory-verbal modalities, reaction times to a stimulus have been shown to be faster if salient features of the stimulus and response sets correspond than if they do not. Accounts that attribute such stimulus-response compatibility effects to general translation processes predict that similar effects should occur for cross-modal stimulus and response sets. To test this prediction, three experiments were conducted examining four-choice reactions with (1) visual spatial-location stimuli assigned to speech responses, (2) speech stimuli assigned to keypress responses, and (3) symbolic visual stimuli assigned to speech responses. In all the experiments, responses were faster when correspondence between salient features of the stimulus and response sets was maintained, demonstrating that similar principles of translation operate both within and across modalities.