The up-right/down-left advantage for vertically oriented stimuli and horizontally oriented responses: A dual-strategy hypothesis

C. Umilta's (1991) proposal that the upright/down-left advantage for up and down stimuli mapped to left and right responses is due to verbal coding wa s evaluated. Two approaches were used in separating spatial from verbal cod es. The Ist approach used a reaction time distribution bin analysis to exam ine the effect of response speed on the up-right/down-left advantage. The 2 nd approach attempted to create task conditions that would promote either a verbal or visual strategy. Results show that the upright/down-left advanta ge increased as response speed slowed down. This finding was interpreted in terms of the dual-strategy hypothesis, which asserts that participants may use the visual or the verbal stimulus code and that, depending on the task constraints, a visual or verbal strategy may prevail. With a visual strate gy, no compatibility effect arises. With a verbal strategy, the upright/dow n-left advantage emerges.