Stimulus-Response Compatibility of Auditory Stimulus Features: Timbre, Pitch, and Number

  • When stimulus and response overlap in a choice-reaction task, enhanced performance can be observed. This effect, the so-called Stimulus-Response Compatibility (SRC) has been shown to appear for a variety of different stimulus features such as numerical or physical size, luminance, or pitch height. While many of these SRC effects have been investigated in an isolated manner, only fewer studies focus on possible interferences when more than one stimulus dimension is varied. The present thesis investigated how the SRC effect of pitch heights, the so-called SPARC effect (Spatial Pitch Associations of Response Codes), is influenced by additionally varied stimulus information. In Study 1, the pitch heights of presented tones were varied along with timbre categories under two different task and pitch range conditions and with two different response alignments. Similarly, in Study 2, pitch heights as well as numerical values were varied within sung numbers under two different task conditions. The results showed simultaneous SRC effects appearing independently of each other in both studies: In Study 1, an expected SRC effect of pitch heights with horizontal responses (i.e., a horizontal SPARC effect) was observed. More interestingly, an additional and unexpected SRC effect of timbre with response sides presented itself independently of this SPARC effect. Similar results were obtained in Study 2: Here, an SRC effect for pitch heights (SPARC) and an SRC effect for numbers (i.e., SNARC or Spatial Numerical Associations of Response Codes, respectively) were observed and again the effects did not interfere with each other. Thus, results indicate that SPARC with horizontal responses does not interfere with SRC effects of other, simultaneously varied stimulus dimensions. These findings are discussed within the principle of polarity correspondence and the dimensional overlap model as theoretical accounts for SRC effects. In sum, it appears that the different types of information according to varied stimulus dimensions enter the decision stage of stimulus processing from separate channels.

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Metadaten
Author:Barbara Estner
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:386-kluedo-37812
Advisor:Thomas Lachmann
Document Type:Doctoral Thesis
Language of publication:English
Date of Publication (online):2014/04/22
Year of first Publication:2014
Publishing Institution:Technische Universität Kaiserslautern
Granting Institution:Technische Universität Kaiserslautern
Acceptance Date of the Thesis:2014/04/14
Date of the Publication (Server):2014/04/23
Page Number:IX, 98
Faculties / Organisational entities:Kaiserslautern - Fachbereich Sozialwissenschaften
DDC-Cassification:1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 150 Psychologie
Licence (German):Standard gemäß KLUEDO-Leitlinien vom 10.09.2012