The Mechanism Of Object Consistency Effect

In classroom teaching,the presentation position of materials in PowerPoint and the placement of tangible auxiliary realia in experiments and games affect students' learning efficiency,which is similar to the concept of spatial correspondence.Correspondence between spatial locations of stimulus and response could affect processing speed.The object-based correspondence effect,also called object-based Simon effect,is a special spatial correspondence effect,and refers to the phenomenon that the responses are faster and more accurate when the handle of the graspable object and the response position or the responding hand are consistent than inconsistent.Tucker and Ellis(1998)first found the object-based correspondence effect,and attributed the effect to handle's affordance.In other words,when participants watched the graspable object.they automatically activated the tendency to grasp the object handle with the corresponding hand.Therefore,when the responding hand that was automatically activated by the handle was consistent that required by the task,responses were faster.In addition to affordance,many researchers also used spatial position coding account to explain the effect.The account holds a view that the generation of the object-based correspondence effect is related to the position of the asymmetric handle of the stimuli,which automatically activates the response of ipsilateral position,leading to the object-based correspondence effect(Cho&Proctor,2010).It's uncertain that the generation of object-based correspondence effect is due to affordance or spatial position coding account.In current study,three experiments were conducted to investigate the generation mechanism of the object-based correspondence effect.The stimulus materials were the silhouettes and photographs of the frying pans.In Experiment 1 the frying pan was located in the center of the screen based on the whole location.The participants were asked to judge the stimulus that could activate the tendency of grasping the handle was upright or inverted(Saccone,Churches,&Nicholls,2016),and responded with two hands.The aim was to examine whether the silhouettes and photographs of the frying pan would exist the object-based correspondence effect under the condition.In Experiment 2,the base of the frying pan was on the center of the screen,which made the left and right position of the handle more significant.And the aim to examine whether the silhouettes and photographs of the frying pan would appear the object-based correspondence effect while there existed the significant spatial coding.Experiment 3 adopted crossed-hand response to separate response position and responding hand,in other words participants pressed right key with left hand and left key with right hand,and explore the direction of the object-based correspondence effect was consistent with spatial position coding or affordance when the both were opposite,and finally clarified the generation mechanism of the object-based correspondence effect.The results suggested that there was the object-based correspondence effect in Experiment 1 when spatial location of the stimulus was not significant for silhouette stimuli,but photograph stimuli did not exist.In Experiment 2 when the spatial coding of the stimuli was more significant,silhouette and photograph stimuli both existed the correspondence effect and the effect size of the both was similar.The RT combined analysis of Experiment 1 and 2 suggested that the correspondence effect size of Experimental 2 was larger than Experiment 1 for silhouette stimuli,and photograph stimuli was similar.In Experiment 3 when the hands were crossed there were correspondence effect between the handle and the response position for both silhouette and photograph stimuli,but not the correspondence effect between the handle and the responding hand.The combined analysis with the Experiment 2 suggested that the effect size of Experiment 3 was smaller than Experiment 2 for both silhouette and photograph stimuli.Based on these results,we concluded that the spatial position coding account played an important role in the generation of the object-based correspondence effect for both silhouette and photograph stimuli,and the role of affordance was very small.