Things That Go Together: A Review of Stimulus-Response Compatibility and Related Effects

This chapter presents a review of stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility and related effects, and indicates that relative S-R compatibility tends to increase in proportion to the degree of direct physical correspondence between the paired stimulus and response alphabets.

Abstract

This chapter presents a review of stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility and related effects. The S-R ensemble must be learnable and usable. The humans who constitute the system's liveware must be able to learn to associate the symbols in the response alphabet with those in the stimulus alphabet and to do so well enough to perform consistently and correctly. S-R compatibility effects are also relatively stable, but they are accentuated under conditions of workload stress. Extraneous activity, such as a secondary task, affects performance least with the most compatible ensembles and degrades performance most with the least compatible pairings. The use of highly compatible S-R ensembles tends to optimize both human performances and the system performances that are dependent upon those human performances. The discovery and use of the mechanisms underlying S-R compatibility effects is basic to the development of effective human-factors applications. The studies indicate that relative S-R compatibility tends to increase in proportion to the degree of direct physical correspondence between the paired stimulus and response alphabets. This observation can be safely generalized to all other ensembles employing similar types of perceptual-motor performances.