Distance, symmetry, and task affect right-left vs. up-down judgments

Abstract

Subjects judged whether a stimulus in a designated location pointed right, left, up, or down, or they judged whether two right-left or up-down stimuli pointed in the same or different directions. Pairs of stimuli were either far apart or close together, both of the same form or not, and aligned horizontally or vertically. In the location task, the only significant effect was that far stimuli were responded to faster than near stimuli, probably because selective attention was easier. In the same-different task, stimulus orientation interacted with alignment such that vertical stimuli were faster with horizontal alignment and horizontal stimuli were faster with vertical alignment. This effect occurred, however, only when stimuli were of the same form and when they had opposite orientations. It was attenuated when they were far apart. Calling symmetric stimuli different was the source of difficulty in the same-different task. There was no evidence for an inherent difficulty with right and left in either task. © 1982, The psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.