Abstract
In the Simon task, participants perform a decision on non-spatial features (e.g., stimulus color) by responding with a left or right key-press to a stimulus presented on the left or right side of the screen. In the flanker task, they classify the central character while ignoring the flanking characters. In each task, there is a conflict between the response-relevant features and the response-irrelevant features (i.e., the location on the screen for the Simon task, and the flankers for the flanker task). Thus, in both tasks, resolving conflict requires to inhibit irrelevant features and to focus on relevant features. When both tasks were combined within the same trial (e.g., when the row of characters was presented on the left or right side of the screen), most previous research has shown an interaction. In the present study, we investigated whether this interaction is affected by a multiplicative priming of the correct response occurring when both Simon and flanker irrelevant features co-activate the correct response (Exp. 1), a spatial overlap between Simon and flanker features (Exp. 2), and the learning of stimulus-response pairings (Exp. 3). The results only show an impact of multiplicative priming.
Highlights
In a Simon task, participants are asked to perform a decision on non-spatial features for stimuli presented on the left and right side of the screen [e.g., 1–3]
The descriptive results for reaction time (RT) and error rates are presented in Figs 5 and 6, for Experiment 1a and 1b, respectively
Together, when the focus is on the congruency effect, the results showed an interaction between Simon and flanker congruency for both RTs and error rates
Summary
In a Simon task, participants are asked to perform a decision on non-spatial features for stimuli presented on the left and right side of the screen [e.g., 1–3]. Participants are asked to classify the central character of a row (e.g., the color of the middle letter from a row of X’s) while ignoring the flanking characters [e.g., 4]. When both tasks are combined within the same trial (e.g., by presenting a colored row of X’s on the left or right side of the screen), previous research has revealed an interaction [5–9 but see 8, 10]. We asked whether this interaction is affected by a multiplicative priming effect, a spatial overlap between Simon and flanker features, or the learning of stimulus-response pairings
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