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Attentional and intentional cueing in a Simon task: An EEG-based approach

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Abstract

Advance information about the location of a stimulus (attentional cueing) does not affect the Simon effect (a shortening of manual response times whenever the position of a stimulus that is irrelevant for the task corresponds to the side of the response). However, advance information about the side of a response (intentional cueing) enhances the Simon effect. At first sight, these well-established results contradict two important assumptions about the origin of the Simon effect: (a) the effect originates at least in part in a covert shift of visual attention that forces the preparation of a response towards the location of the attentional shift and (b) interference between stimulus location and response side takes place within a response selection stage. We replicated the behavioral finding in a study that measured event-related potentials (ERPs) of the EEG. ERPs indicated that the mechanisms causing the Simon effect remain widely unaffected by advance information. Clear evidence for both response preparation and attentional shifts in the cue–target interval was found. Additionally, ERPs suggested that the increment of the Simon effect by intentional cueing might be due to perceptual factors rather than to an alteration in the mechanisms involved in the generation of a regular Simon effect. The implications of these data for the role of attention and of response selection in Simon tasks are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Newton is the unit of force. 2 N corresponds to the weight exerted by a mass of 204 g. This criterion is well within the range used by usual (all-or-none) response devices.

  2. ERLs are difference potentials calculated as the LRP (Coles, 1989; Wascher and Wauschkuhn, 1996) that indicate spatial processing. Contralateral-ipsilateral differences are calculated for all symmetrical electrode pairs by subtracting the EEG activity ipsilateral to the required response from the contralateral activity. Mean differences are calculated separately for left and right responses and subsequently averaged.

  3. All analyses including temporal measures or amplitudes that were derived from peak picking are compared for the two cued conditions only because of the differing EEG-sampling rates in the two experiments.

  4. C1/C2 was selected for the measurement of motor activation since it showed hand-motor activation most purely in a regular 10/10 system. This electrode pair is located over the hand motor areas and close to the electrode positions C3'/C4' as defined by Kutas & Donchin (1980). C3 and C4, which might be an alternative electrode pair to measure the LRP, are in many subjects located behind the central sulcus (see Steinmetz et al., 1989) and therefore more probably affected by the overlap of activity from the parietal cortex (see also Van der Lubbe et al., 2000; Wascher et al., 2001), which might interfere with motor activity if laterally presented stimuli are used.

  5. One might argue that unless subjects are going to respond incorrectly on most invalid trials they have not selected the response based on the intentional cue. There is still a decision to be made, namely to execute the preselected response or to revise it (R. Proctor, personal communication, October, 2002). The crucial point here is how to define response selection. On the one hand, response selection might be defined as the final decision to execute a particular action. In this case, all responses, even in simple response tasks, have to be considered to require response selection. On the other hand, response selection may be defined as the generation or the retrieval of an S–R rule. In this case, subjects may use the selected response in validly cued trials and revise their decision in invalidly cued trials. We refer to the latter definition.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Carlo Umiltà, Robert Proctor, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This study was supported by grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to Edmund Wascher (Wa 987/ 5–1).

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  1. Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Cognitive Psychophysiology of Action, Amalienstr. 33, 80799 , Munich, Germany

    Edmund Wascher & M. Wolber

  2. Department of Clinical and Physiological Psychology, University of Tuebingen

    Edmund Wascher & M. Wolber

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  1. Edmund Wascher
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  2. M. Wolber
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Correspondence to Edmund Wascher.

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Wascher, E., Wolber, M. Attentional and intentional cueing in a Simon task: An EEG-based approach. Psychological Research 68, 18–30 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-002-0128-z

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