Simon Effect Was Modulated By Response Strategy Development And Education Psychology Master

Stimulus-response compatibility is a principle which was allowed by engineering psychology, especially by man machine interface designing. Researching on Simon effect which is a kind of stimulus-response compatibility is better for us not only to understand cognitive processing of compatibility, but also for designing humanistic man machine interface. Simon effect refers to a phenomenon which reaction time is faster, and/or accuracy is higher when stimulus location and response location were compatible than when they were not. In Simon tasks, participants were asked to respond imperative stimulus, such as color, figure or else, while ignoring stimulus location. However, irrelevant stimulus location interferes with relevant stimulus discrimination. For instance, participants were ordered to press a left key when a red patch presents on the screen, and press a right key when they saw a green patch. Reaction time is faster and/or accuracy is higher when a red (or green) patch presents on the left (right) side than when it presents on the right (or left) side.Simon originally attributed this phenomenon to a kind of natural ability orienting to the source of stimulation. Some early accounts ascribe Simon effect to conflict from the stage of spatial codes, such as attention-shift account, reference-encoding account. However, latter accounts ascribe Simon effect to conflict from the stage of response choice. For example, dual-route models consider that Simon effect rises when unconditional route which processes irrelevant stimulus location conflicts with conditional route which processes relevant stimulus attribute in the stage of response choice. Moreover, conditional route is thought to base on working memory while unconditional route is based on long-term memory. Response-discrimination account argues that Simon effect presents when stimulus location encodes and response encodes interact in working memory, but not presents when there is no interaction in working memory, even if two kinds of encodes exists.From Baddeley's influential model, the WM system, which retains and manipulates information temporarily, is composed of three main components:the central executive system which controls and regulates the cognitive process, and two storage systems:the phonological loop which deals with language processing such as color naming, the visuospatial sketchpad which handles visuospatial information processing such as color shade discrimination. One common characteristic of the latter accounts mentioned above is that Simon effect is relevant to working memory. For instance, the relation between condition route of dual-route models and working memory, and the representation in working memory for response-discrimination account. Some recent studies also found that current working memory load could modulate Simon effect. However, no research clarifies which and how working memory subsystems contribute to Simon effect.Based on researches about the relationship between Simon effect and working memory, we found that Simon effect depends on verbal representation by working memory to relevant stimulus. In other words, Simon effect presents if and only if relevant stimulus was processed and represented verbally by working memory. In that study, both between-category (BC) color stimuli which were presented by verbal working memory and within-category (WC) color stimuli which were presented by visual working memory were used to explore this question. Set effect would be found if Simon effect exactly depends on verbal working memory. Set effect is, when participants adopt spatial codes to represent a response-key in Task A, they may adopt the same codes to represent a response-key in Task B. That is to say, spatial codes transferred from Task A to B. It may happen even if Task B could be finished without spatial codes. Following this logic, we explored whether the special representation in the former task could transfer to the latter task and give rise to that participants use the same representation in task B.In Experiment 1, participants performed BC Simon task first and WC Simon task second. The BC Simon stimuli were inclined to be represented verbally which lead to Simon effect presented and the WC Simon stimuli were inclined to be represented visually which may lead to Simon effect absent. Therefore, when WC task followed BC task, transfer happens if Simon effect presented in both task, while not if Simon effect just presented in BC task. Results showed that Simon effect appeared not only in the BC task but also in the WC task, which means that transfer from the former BC task to the latter WC task arise.In experiment 2, task order was reversal. Participants performed WC Simon task first and BC Simon task second. If transfer occurs, Simon effect should not appear in either task, for participants adopted visual representation to perform WC task first. Results showed that Simon effect did not appear in WC task but do in BC task which means that transfer did not work in this experiment.Experiment 3 with experiment 1, experiment 4 with experiment 2 were similar, except that averaged color difference between BC colors were narrowed and equal with that between WC colors. Participants' strategy was explore in this circumstance and compared with that in experiment 1 and 2. Results of experiment 3 were exactly in keeping with experiment 1, showed Simon effect both in BC and in WC tasks. However, results from experiment 4 were not coincide with experiment 2, revealed that Simon effect disappeared both in BC and in WC tasks, results in indicated that transfer occurred in Experiment 3 and 4.We could make the conclusion from the four experiments that participants'strategy could modulate the appearance of Simon effect. The details are as follows:First, when the stimuli used in BC task were solid-colored patches and the stimuli used in WC task were patches with averaged color difference (ΔEuv*) for 20.1, representation on relevant stimuli could transfer from the former BC task to the later WC task, which lead to the presentation in both BC and WC task, but could not transfer from the former WC task to the latter BC task, which lead to the presentation of Simon effect in BC but not in WC task. So, participants' response strategy adopted verbal working memory to represent BC colors was stronger than adopted visual working memory to represent WC colors.Secondly, when the stimuli used in both BC and WC task were patches with the same averaged color difference (ΔEuv*) for 20.1, representation on relevant stimuli could not only transfer from the former BC task to the later WC task, which lead to the presentation in both BC and WC task, but also transfer from the former WC task to the latter BC task, which lead to the disappearance of Simon effect in both BC and WC task.