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Temporal response-effect compatibility

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Abstract.

This study investigated the impact of duration-varying response effects on the generation and execution of duration-varying responses. Participants performed short or long keypresses which produced auditory effects of corresponding duration (short response ->short tone, long response ->long tone) or of noncorresponding duration (short response ->long tone, long response ->short tone). Experiment 1 revealed faster responding with a corresponding than with a noncorresponding Response-Effect (R-E) mapping; that is, a temporal R-E compatibility effect. Additionally, increasing effect duration increased response latencies, whereas it decreased keypress duration. Experiment 2 showed that the influence of temporal R-E compatibility persists even when responses are cued in advance, suggesting that at least part of it originates from response generation processes occurring later than a traditional response selection stage. These findings corroborate and complement effect-based theories of action control which assume that the selection, initiation, and execution of movements is mediated by anticipation of their sensory effects.

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Notes

  1. Whereas dit responses profited considerably from a compatible (short) tone in comparison to an incompatible (long) tone, dah responses profited only marginally from a compatible (long) tone in comparison to an incompatible (short) tone. It is thus tempting to speculate that the R-E compatibility effect is stronger for dit than for dah reactions. Yet, such an inference is not possible. Because of potential baseline differences between individual responses or response effects, the only valid measure for a compatibility effect is the interaction between them, which includes all responses and effects and thereby eliminates all baseline differences between them. It is therefore not meaningful to asses a compatibility influence for either a single stimulus, response, or response effect in isolation (cf. Kornblum & Lee, 1995, p.860 for a comprehensive discussion of this methodical issue).

  2. This observation additionally provides evidence against a perceptual explanation of R-E compatibility effects: One might argue that the stimuli in the present experiments acquire the meaning of the responses they are assigned to (e.g. a red stimulus may become "short" because it required a short response). The present results may thus be construed as a kind of (acquired) S-R compatibility effect rather than an R-E compatibility effect (cf. Hasbroucq & Guiard, 1991). Previous research has already rejected this account by demonstrating R-E compatibility effects without response-specific stimuli, which makes the acquisition of response-specific stimulus meaning impossible (cf. Kunde, 2001a, Experiment 3). Moreover, the informative cues in the present study were 100% valid, turning the subsequent stimuli functionally into GO-Signals. Stimulus color was thus irrelevant and with all likelihood ignored. A perceptual explanation faces serious problems in explaining why R-E compatibility effects persist even 2000 ms after cue presentation, i.e. long after the perceptual analysis of the cue has finished.

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Acknowledgements.

I thank Peter Frensch, Michael Zießler, and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments on an earlier version of the paper. Funding for this research was provided by a grant of the German Research Foundation to Joachim Hoffmann at the University of Würzburg (Grant HO 1301/6–1).

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  1. Institut für Psychologie, Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 06099 Halle (Saale), Germany

    Wilfried Kunde

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Kunde, W. Temporal response-effect compatibility. Psychological Research 67, 153–159 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-002-0114-5

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