Stimulus-response compatibility and position of the hands: nonadditive effects

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Factors
• Experimental Psychology

Background:

• Stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) is a fundamental concept in cognitive psychology.
• The influence of body posture, such as hand position, on cognitive tasks is an area of ongoing research.
• Previous models often assume additive effects of task parameters.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the interaction between stimulus-response compatibility and hand position in a choice reaction task.
• To test the hypothesis that automatic response activation can lead to non-additive effects.
• To determine if hand crossing eliminates compatibility effects.

Main Methods:

• A two-choice stimulus-response compatibility task was employed.
• Participants responded to visual targets ('Left' or 'Right') using compatible or incompatible key assignments.
• The task was performed with hands in both uncrossed and crossed positions.

Main Results:

• The effects of stimulus-response compatibility and hand position were not additive.
• Crucially, no stimulus-response compatibility effect was observed when hands were crossed.
• The correlation between automatic response mappings varied with the combination of compatibility and hand position.

Conclusions:

• The findings support a model where stimuli can activate multiple automatic responses.
• The interaction between hand position and compatibility suggests a modulation of response selection processes.
• Non-additive effects and the elimination of compatibility in the crossed-hand condition are explained by the proposed dual-automatic response hypothesis.