In Touch With the Simon Effect

Cognitive control has been extensively studied using the auditory and visual modalities. In the current study, a tactile version of the Simon task was created in order to test control mechanisms in a modality that was less studied, to provide comparative and new information. A significant Simon effect - reaction time gap between congruent (i.e., stimulus and response in the same relative location) and incongruent (i.e., stimulus and response in opposite locations) stimuli - provided grounds to further examine both general and tactile-specific aspects of cognitive control in three experiments. By implementing a neutral condition and conducting sequential and distributional analysis, the present study: (a) supports two different independent mechanisms of cognitive control - reactive control and proactive control; (b) reveals facilitation and interference within the tactile Simon effect; and (c) proposes modality differences in activation and processing of the spatially driven stimulus-response association.