The role of working memory in spatial S-R correspondence effects.

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of working memory (WM) load on response conflicts arising from spatial (non) correspondence between irrelevant stimulus location and response location (Simon effect). The dominant view attributes the Simon effect to automatic processes of location-based response priming. The automaticity view predicts insensitivity of the Simon effect to manipulations of processing load. Four experiments investigated the role of spatial and verbal WM in horizontal and vertical Simon tasks by using a dual-task approach. Participants maintained different amounts of spatial or verbal information in WM while performing a horizontal or vertical Simon task. Results showed that high load generally decreased, and sometimes eliminated, the Simon effect. It is interesting to note that spatial load had a larger impact than verbal load on the horizontal Simon effect, whereas verbal load had a larger impact than spatial load on the vertical Simon effect. The results highlight the role of WM as the perception-action interface in choice-response tasks. Moreover, the results suggest spatial coding of horizontal stimulus-response (S-R) tasks, and verbal coding of vertical S-R tasks.