Auditory stimulus-response compatibility: Is there a contribution of stimulus-hand correspondence?

Simon, Hinrichs, and Craft found that when subjects responded to a tone in the left or right ear with a left or right keypress, both ear-response-loca tion correspondence and ear-hand correspondence affected reaction time. Thi s outcome is in contrast to results obtained for auditory and visual Simon tasks (i.e., tasks in which stimulus location is irrelevant) as well as res ults obtained in visual stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility studies, whic h show only an effect of spatial S-R correspondence. Experiment 1 was a rep lication of Simon et al.'s experiment in which spatial mapping and hand pla cement (uncrossed, crossed) were varied. The results were inconsistent with those of Simon et al., showing no ear-hand compatibility effect. Experimen t 2 was a second replication with an additional condition examined in which the stimuli were visual locations. The results showed no contribution of s timulus-hand correspondence for either auditory or visual stimuli. Experime nt 3 was a replication of another experiment by Simon et al. in which tone pitch was relevant and tone location irrelevant. Like Simon et al.'s data, our results showed no indication that stimulus-hand correspondence is a sig nificant factor. Overall, our results imply that regardless of whether tone location is relevant or irrelevant, ear-response-location correspondence i s the only factor that contributes to S-R compatibility in auditory two-cho ice reaction tasks.