Exogenous and endogenous response priming with auditory stimuli

Abstract

Exogenous and endogenous response priming were investigated by comparing performance on stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) and re- sponse-effect compatibility (REC) tasks using a repeated measures design. In the SRC task, par- ticipants made finger taps at high or low locations in response to centrally presented visual stimuli paired with high- or low-pitched tones. In the REC task, the tones were triggered by responses instead of being presented with the visual stim- uli, and hence effects of REC on response times reflect the anticipation of forthcoming tones. Re- sults indicated that response times were shorter with compatible mappings between tones and responses than with incompatible mappings in both tasks. Although these SRC and REC effects did not differ reliably in magnitude, they were uncorrelated across participants. Thus, although exogenous and endogenous response priming may be functionally equivalent at the level of the group, it is unclear whether this is the case at the level of the individual.