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11:00 - 12:30
Parallel sessions 2
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11:00 - 12:30
Room: HSZ - N3
Chair/s:
Miriam Gade, Pamela Baess
The Simon effect – characterized by quicker responses when the location of the imperative stimulus corresponds to the position of the required response – has been recognized for decades (Simon, 1969) and is considered a valuable window into fundamental mechanisms of information processing. Simon effects have been found to vary depending on both spatial arrangement of stimuli and participants’ intentions, highlighting that the underlying cognitive processes are flexible and subject to modulation. Traditionally, Simon tasks are administered to individuals working in isolation, which does not reflect the inherently social nature of humans.
Therefore, this symposium spotlights the role of social information in modulating the Simon effect. Across four presentations and an integrative discussion, speakers will examine how agency attributions, perspective taking, and the presence of a co-actor influences performance in the Simon task. The findings will illuminate the social foundations of the classic Simon task.

Discussant: Roman Liepelt
Submission 405
Simon Standing Upright
SymposiumTalk-01
Presented by: Miriam Gade
Miriam Gade 1, Pamela Baess 2
1 Medical School Berlin, Germany
2 University of Hildesheim, Germany
In two experiments we investigated to which degree the Simon effect is reliably altered by spatial layout of the stimuli when using upright standing manikins. Those manikins were holding a ball in either their horizontal dimension (i.e., left or right from their waist) or vertical dimension (above or below their chest). Differential Simon effects have been reported depending on stimulus dimension suggesting less or more reliance on controlled processes. We speculated that agency labels (“me”, “friend” or “colleague”) should increase the recruitment of controlled processes and thus abolish the difference between dimensions. In Experiment 1, the agency label was presented simultaneously with the imperative stimulus, i.e. the ball color, and influenced the Simon effect likewise for both spatial dimensions. The Simon effect, i.e. the difference between congruent and incongruent trials was smallest for the “me” label, and about the same size for the other two labels. However, dimension did not show a main effect suggesting the label overruled the spatial layout of the ball position. Using blank labels that did not include any agency information, Experiment 2 restored the influence of dimension on the congruency effect, yielding smaller congruency effects for the vertical dimension. We speculate that the social labels go along with a generally more controlled processing of the Simon task that does overrule the spatial layout adopted.