The role of the response dimension for referential coding in the go-nogo Simon task

T. Dolk, Roman Liepelt, B. Hommel, W. Prinz

Publication: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingContributions to collected editions/anthologiesResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Attempts to answer the question of how we mentally represent one’s own and other people’s actions have inspired a great deal of research in recent decades. However, although bottom-up and top-down manipulations of the joint go-nogo Simon effect (joint cSE) provide striking evidence of a crucial role of the response dimension, surprisingly little is known about the influence of the stimulus dimension. To this end, we developed a cross-modal go-nogo Simon task, which allowed us to manipulate the saliency of the response- and the stimulus-dimension within a single study. Participants performed an auditory-visual go-nogo Simon task by exclusively responding to their assigned modality (either auditory or visual) in the presence (joint condition) or the absence (single condition) of a co-actor. Results showed reliable cSEs in both the single and the joint condition (Fig. 7.1.2), suggesting that the cSE-inducing event does not need to share the modality with the target stimulus. We therefore conclude that the task-relevance of the reference-inducing event does not matter, provided it is sufficiently salient. Taking both parts together, we conclude that the cSE occurs whenever agents code their own action as left or right in reference to another salient social or non-social event in the stimulus and/or response dimension. In line with the low-level feature binding framework proposed for the joint cSE recently (Liepelt, Wenke, Fischer & Prinz, 2011), the present findings suggest referential coding to be a crucial mechanism underlying the cSE
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationResearch Report 2010/2011
Publication date2011
Pages268
Publication statusPublished - 2011

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