Bipedal vs. unipedal: a comparison between one-foot and two-foot driving in a driving simulator.

Is it better to drive with one foot or with two feet? Although two-foot driving has fostered interminable debate in the media, no scientific and systematic research has assessed this issue and federal and local state governments have provided no answers. The current study compared traditional unipedal (one-foot driving, using the right foot to control the accelerator and the brake pedal) with bipedal (two-foot driving, using the right foot to control the accelerator and the left foot to control the brake pedal) responses to a visual stimulus in a driving simulator study. Each of 30 undergraduate participants drove in a simulated driving scenario.

Stimulus-response correspondence effect as a function of temporal overlap between relevant and irrelevant information processing.

The stimulus-response correspondence (SRC) effect refers to advantages in performance when stimulus and response correspond in dimensions or features, even if the common features are irrelevant to the task. Previous research indicated that the SRC effect depends on the temporal course of stimulus information processing. The current study investigated how the temporal overlap between relevant and irrelevant stimulus processing influences the SRC effect.

Acquisition and transfer of attention allocation strategies in a multiple-task work environment.

Objective: Payoff effects on strategy development and change were assessed in a synthetic work environment, SYNWORK1.

Background: Many work settings require several tasks to be performed concurrently. It is important to know how the strategies used in performing the respective tasks vary with payoffs.

Coding controlled and triggered cursor movements as action effects: influences on the auditory Simon effect for wheel-rotation responses.

Four experiments investigated influences of irrelevant action effects on response selection in Simon tasks for which tone pitch was relevant and location irrelevant, and responses were clockwise- counterclockwise wheel rotations. When the wheel controlled left-right movement of a cursor in a direction opposite an instructed left-right hand-movement goal, the Simon effect was reduced. When the wheel was held at the bottom, this reduction was due to some participants coding responses relative to the cursor and others relative to the hands.

Stimulus-response compatibility with wheel-rotation responses: will an incompatible response coding be used when a compatible coding is possible?

Three experiments were conducted in which subjects responded to left-right tones with clockwise-counterclockwise rotations of a steering wheel using one of two stimulus-response assignments. When the hands were at the bottom of the wheel, where hand movement is opposite to wheel movement, subjects coded responses according to the frame that yielded a compatible mapping when the instructions did not emphasize either hand or wheel movements (Experiment 1). When instructions emphasized hand movements, responses were coded relative to the hand-referenced frame (Experiment 2), and when the wheel controlled a visual cursor, responses were coded relative to a cursor-referenced frame (Experiment 3).

The Simon effect with wheel-rotation responses.

The authors examined clockwise and counterclockwise wheel-rotation responses to high- or low-pitched tones presented in participants' (N = 96, Experiment 1; N = 48, Experiment 2; N = 48, Experiment 3) left and right ears. In Experiment 1, a Simon effect (fastest responding when tone location and direction of wheel turn corresponded) was obtained when participants' hands were at the top or middle of the wheel but not at the bottom. With the bottom hand placement, a Simon effect was induced by instructions emphasizing hand movements but not by instructions emphasizing wheel movements (Experiment 2), and by a visual cursor controlled by the wheel but not one triggered by the response (Experiment 3).