STIMULUS-RESPONSE COMPATIBILITY AND THE SIMON EFFECT - TOWARD AN EMPIRICAL CLARIFICATION

Perceptual accounts attribute the Simon effect to the correlation between relevant stimulus feature and response location (e.g., T. Hasbroucq & Y. Guiard, 1991). This account is questioned, and it is demonstrated that a Simon effect can be obtained without a stimulus-response correlation (Experiment 1). Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this finding and showed that the relative size of stimuli and response labels and temporal overlap of warning signal and stimulus cannot account for why the effect was absent in Hasbroucq and Guiard's study. However, no Simon effect occurred in a close replication of Hasbroucq and Guiard's original experiment (Experiment 4). Participants' reports suggested that this was due to a special stimulus-coding strategy, and in fact, the effect reappeared with a slightly modified stimulus display (Experiment 5). These results provide strong evidence against a perceptual approach to the Simon effect and support response-related views instead.