S. Kornblum et Jw. Lee, STIMULUS-RESPONSE COMPATIBILITY WITH RELEVANT AND IRRELEVANT STIMULUSDIMENSIONS THAT DO AND DO NOT OVERLAP WITH THE RESPONSE, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 21(4), 1995, pp. 855-875
Five experiments were conducted using 4- and 6-choice stimulus-respons
e compatibility tasks with graphic and alphabetic stimuli, and keypres
s and verbal responses. A comparison of performance with compatible, i
ncompatible, and neutral conditions shows that when a stimulus set is
perceptually, conceptually, or structurally similar to a response set,
(a) mean reaction times (RTs) are faster when individual stimuli and
responses match than when they do not match, (b) this is true whether
the stimulus and response sets are similar on relevant or irrelevant d
imensions, (c) this ''compatibility effect'' is greater when the dimen
sions are relevant than when they are irrelevant, and (d) whether the
dimensions are relevant or irrelevant, the faster RTs are due to a fac
ilitative process and the slower RTs to an interfering process. These
results are accounted for by the dimensional overlap model.