Stimulus–response compatibility with body parts: a study with hands

Stimulus–response compatibility (SRC) effects are classified depending on the way that the elements of the stimulus and response sets interact, influencing both the speed and accuracy of the motor response. This is particularly important for social stimuli, such as hands. However, the stimuli used in most SRC studies are often simple or abstract figures. Our main goal in the present work was to investigate how task ensembles containing body parts (hands) as stimuli fit into Kornblum’s taxonomy expressed in the dimensional overlap model. Specifically, we test whether hand stimuli elicit Simon or spatial Stroop effects in a SRC task. We set up two experiments using either hands or arrows as stimuli. Our results demonstrate that hands elicit a Simon effect in a SRC task. However, different from arrows, which constitute Type 8 Kornblum’s ensembles, hands do not elicit a spatial Stroop effect and form Type 3 ensembles.