The "Compatibility Effect between Physical Stimulus Size and Left-Right Responses" replication study experiment as final project for the study course "Experimental Psychology Lab" in SS20; built with _magpie (“Minimal Architecture for the Generation of Portable Interactive Experiments”, Illieva, Xiang, Rautenstrauch, Franke).
The experiment can be found here: https://size-space-compatibility.netlify.app
The processing of cognitive tasks based on somatosensory inputs and motor-sensory outputs is a deeply investigated field of study in the cognitive sciences. Former research proposes “A theory of magnitude” (ATOM, Walsh, 2003, 2015). The theory assumes that the brain uses a generalized magnitude-processing system where the perception of space, time and quantity overlap and interact on an intermediate level of processing antecedent to the response-selection stage. This means that specific properties of the three branches space, time and quantity share a certain representational system. ATOM is therefore regarded as a shared-representations account.
For example, it is well accepted that numbers can be represented spatially from left to right (see “SNARC” effect; Dehaene, Dupoux and Mehler, 1990, Dehaene et al. 1993) or that the numerical and physical size of numbers can faster be judged when they are congruent (see “size-congruity effect”; Besner and Coltheart, 1979, Henik and Tzelgov, 1982, Tzelgov, Meyer and Henik, 1992).
In this study we replicate the original paper “Compatibility between Physical Stimulus Size and Left-right Responses: Small is Left and Large is Right” by Wühr and Seegelke (2018). Since in the past the focus of research regarding the ATOM framework lay on interactions of number and size and number and space (see above) but not on the relation between size and space, we here look at how differences in reaction times could support the idea of a horizontal response location representation of stimulus size. We thereby try to answer the question of whether, e.g. a left-hand response is faster for a stimulus of small size than for a stimulus of large size. For that, our task at hand is a classic stimulus – response compatibility task where the participant responds to a single stimulus in each trial, the compatible mapping condition being a left handed response for small stimuli and a right handed response for large stimuli; vice versa in the incompatible mapping condition. We then investigate whether the stimulus size – response location compatibility effect only occurs for right-hand or also for left-hand responses, as previous research, for example Ren et al. (2011) and Wühr and Seegelke (2018) already found a larger compatibility effect for right-hand responses than for left-hand responses. The study’s results can then be of further assistance for neuroscientific studies, expanding the theory of a shared-representation account, like ATOM.
- Reaction times in the compatible mapping condition are faster than in the incompatible mapping condition.
- The stimulus size – response location compatibility effect is more pronounced for the right-hand than for the left-hand responses; i.e. the difference in reaction times between the compatible and incompatible mapping condition is larger for right-hand responses than the difference for left-hand responses.
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Wühr, P., and Seegelke, C. (2018). Compatibility between Physical Stimulus Size and Left-right Responses: Small is Left and Large is Right. Journal of Cognition, 1(1): 17, pp. 1–11, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.19
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