Visual effects of the intended action goal influence manual choice reaction tasks in virtual environments
Poster Presentation

Luca Falciati
Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences University of Siena

*Mariaelena Tagliabue
Department of General Psychology University of Padova

*Carlo Arrigo Umiltà
Department of General Psychology University of Padova

*Stefano Massaccesi
Department of General Psychology University of Padova

     Abstract ID Number: 66
     Full text: PDF
     Last modified: June 27, 2005

Abstract
We investigated whether visual effects of the intended action goal influence manual choice reaction tasks in virtual environments. Particularly, we examined two spatial compatibility effects: the spatial compatibility between a visual stimulus and the related action goal (S-G effect), and the spatial compatibility between a stimulus-related action goal and the manual response it requires (G-R effect). Three experiments were conducted by means of a Virtual Reality system simulating car driving tasks. In Experiment 1, effects of practicing during a non-immersive spatially incompatible task, usually determining no Simon effect or a reversed Simon effect (Proctor and Lu, 1999; Tagliabue, Zorzi, Umiltà and Bassignani, 2000), affected also 3D virtual navigation tasks. In Experiments 2 and 3, virtual navigation tasks respectively simulating a spatial compatibility task and a Simon task were developed in order to investigate whether situations similar to human real life elicit S-G and G-R effects (Hommel, 1993; Kunde, 2001; Ansorge, 2002). The findings showed that spatial incompatibility tasks delay performances in the virtual environment. Moreover, the Simon task showed a S-G correspondence effect. Finally, both spatial compatibility and Simon tasks showed a G-R correspondence effect. Our results support the assumption that voluntary actions are linked to their perceivable consequences.