ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE published: 19 August 2014 doi: 10.3389/fnins.2014.00243 On the temporal dynamics of spatial stimulus-response transfer between spatial incompatibility and Simon tasks Jason Ivanoff 1*, Ryan Blagdon 1, Stefanie Feener 1, Melanie McNeil 1 and Paul H. Muir 2 1 Department of Psychology, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada 2 Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada Edited by: The Simon effect refers to the performance (response time and accuracy) advantage Dominic Standage, Queen’s for responses that spatially correspond to the task-irrelevant location of a stimulus. It University, Canada has been attributed to a natural tendency to respond toward the source of stimulation. Reviewed by: When location is task-relevant, however, and responses are intentionally directed away Leendert Van Maanen, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands (incompatible) or toward (compatible) the source of the stimulation, there is also an Tiffany Cheing Ho, University of advantage for spatially compatible responses over spatially incompatible responses. California, San Francisco, USA Interestingly, a number of studies have demonstrated a reversed, or reduced, Simon effect *Correspondence: following practice with a spatial incompatibility task. One interpretation of this finding Jason Ivanoff, Department of is that practicing a spatial incompatibility task disables the natural tendency to respond Psychology, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, B3H 3C3, Canada toward stimuli. Here, the temporal dynamics of this stimulus-response (S-R) transfer e-mail:
[email protected] were explored with speed-accuracy trade-offs (SATs). All experiments used the mixed-task paradigm in which Simon and spatial compatibility/incompatibility tasks were interleaved across blocks of trials.