Exploring modality-specificity and conceptual generalization of response-effect anticipation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Iring Koch
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262195089

In cognitive psychology, the "ideomotor" approach proposes that responses are controlled by anticipations of intended sensory consequences ("response effects"). However, the specific nature of the relation between response and anticipated effect is still largely unclear. The present project aims to explore two interrelated issues. First, we examine whether the mapping of response modality (e.g. manual vs. vocal) and effect modality (e.g., visual vs. auditory) influences the impact of effect anticipation. Second, we explore whether the role of effect anticipation in response control can be generalised from perceptual similarity relations between responses and effects to conceptual relations. We investigate these issues using a response-effect (R-E) compatibility paradigm with predictable effect stimuli. Previous work showed that R-E compatibility (with respect to "dimensional overlap") facilitates performance relative to R-E incompatible conditions, suggesting that representations of anticipated effects precede the response. Using variations of this paradigm, we systematically manipulate the modality of responses and effects to examine the role of modality mapping in effect anticipation. Moreover, we examine conceptual overlap of response and effect by manipulating perceptual surface characteristics of the anticipated effects, so that perceptually non-matching effects can maintain the conceptual relation to the response, such as in bilingual transfer (i.e., language of verbal responses and of auditory response effects). Taken together, this project will refine the ideomotor framework with respect to the complementary issues of modality-specificity and conceptual R-E overlap and will thus contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms of response control.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Person: Dr. Andrea M. Philipp