The Activation of Effect Codes in Response Preparation: New Evidence from an Indirect Priming Paradigm

Michael Ziessler,Stefan Vogt,Dieter Nattkemper

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00585

Abstract

Evidence for the anticipation of environmental effects as an integral part of response planning comes mainly from experiments in which the effects were physically presented. Thus, in these studies it cannot be excluded that effect codes were activated during response preparation only because the effects were displayed as external stimuli before response execution. In order to provide more clear-cut evidence for the anticipation of response effects in action planning, we performed a series of three experiments using a new paradigm, where displaying effect codes before the response was avoided. Participants first learned arbitrary effects of key-pressing responses. In the following test phase they were instructed to execute a response only if a Go stimulus was presented after a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). The Go stimulus was either compatible or incompatible with the effect, but independent of the response. In Experiment 1 we tested the paradigm with two responses and two effects. We found a significant compatibility effect: If the Go stimulus was compatible with the response effect, responses were initiated faster than in incompatible trials. In Experiment 2 response effects were only present in the acquisition phase, but not in the test phase. The compatibility effect disappeared, indicating that the results of Experiment 1 were indeed related to the anticipation of the forthcoming response effects. In Experiment 3 we extended this paradigm by using a larger number of stimuli and response alternatives. Again we found a robust compatibility effect, which can only be explained if the effect representations are active before response execution. The compatibility effects in Experiments 1 and 3 did not depend on the SOA. The fact that the Go stimulus affected response preparation at any time indicates that the role of effect anticipation is not limited to response selection.

Highlights

Human motor behavior, when it is not reflexive, is typically carried out to achieve goals
Experiment 2 clearly confirms that the compatibility effect observed in Experiment 1 depended on the response effects
It only occurred in Experiment 1 where the response effects were present, but not in Experiment 2 where the differentiating effect stimuli were replaced by a single effect, the word “correct.” Up to response execution, everything was exactly the same in both experiments

Summary

Introduction

Human motor behavior, when it is not reflexive, is typically carried out to achieve goals. When we plan a movement we normally have an environmental or sensory effect in our mind that we want this movement to produce This can either be in form of the physical movement itself, like in floor exercises or in dancing, or a more distal effect like the creation of a new environmental state, or the avoidance of an unpleasant situation. This leads to the question how the environmental effects, or their representations, are involved in the planning and control of movements. More modern versions of the ideomotor principle follow this suggestion by assuming that voluntary responses or actions are centrally represented by the sensory feedback that they produce, i.e., by their effects (Greenwald, 1970; Prinz, 1983, 1997; Hommel et al, 2001; Hommel, 2009; see Stock and Stock, 2004; Pfister and Janczyk, 2012 for an overview)

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Conclusion