Jf. Stins et Cf. Michaels, STIMULUS-TARGET COMPATIBILITY FOR REACHING MOVEMENTS, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 23(3), 1997, pp. 756-767
Reaction time, movement time, and initial direction of reaching moveme
nts toward a target in left or right hemispace were measured. In Exper
iment 1, the target of movement and hand had to be selected; movements
toward the imperative stimulus were initiated faster than movements t
oward the alternate target, and ipsilateral reaches were initiated fas
ter than contralateral reaches. In Experiment 2, the difference betwee
n ipsilateral and contralateral reaches disappeared when no selection
of the hand had to occur. In Experiment 3, no target had to be selecte
d, and only a stimulus-hand compatibility effect appeared. The results
reveal different compatibility effects (stimulus-target, stimulus-han
d, target-hand), implying that participants exploit different correspo
ndences, depending on the degrees of freedom of the action. The notion
of compatibility effects relating to movement targets offers a new pe
rspective on the negative Simon effect and it questions the general co
ncept of response codes.