Data from two experiments investigating mapping effects between stimulus size and vertical responses
Description
Here we publish the raw-data sets from two experiments investigating mental associations between physical size and vertical locations by investigating mapping (compatibility) effects between stimulus size and response location in a choice-response task with human participants. The background, methods, and results of our experiments have been described in a manuscript entitled "Associations between physical stimulus size and vertical response locations: Small goes down and large goes up", authored by Peter Wühr and Oliver Lindemann. We have submitted this manuscript for publication in April 2025. Until the manuscript has been published, a copy (preprint) of the manuscript can be obtained from the first author upon request to peter.wuehr@tu-dortmund.de. Here is the abstract from our manuscript: This study investigates the existence and direction of associations between physical stimulus size and vertical response locations. In Experiment 1 participants responded to stimulus size by pressing one of two vertically arranged keys. We orthogonally manipulated the mappings between stimulus size and response-key locations, and between hands and response keys. The results showed a novel compatibility effect between physical stimulus size and vertical response location: Responses to the small stimulus were faster at the lower than at the higher location, whereas responses to the large stimulus were faster at the higher than at the lower location. In Experiment 2 we replicated this compatibility effect in vocal responses, when participants responded to stimulus size by saying location words. In combination with previous findings, the present results suggest that the physical size of visual objects is not only associated with horizontal locations, but also with vertical locations. These associations presumably reflect learned correlations between the size of objects and their extension in both the horizontal and the vertical direction. Moreover, the observation of size-space compatibility effects in vocal responses may indicate that they do not only reflect sensorimotor experiences, but also semantic knowledge, which is expressed in linguistic metaphors.
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Steps to reproduce
The methods used to produce the two datasets in this repository have been described in a manuscript entitled "Associations between physical stimulus size and vertical response locations: Small goes down and large goes up", authored by Peter Wühr and Oliver Lindemann. We have submitted this manuscript for publication in April 2025. Until the manuscript has been published, a copy (preprint) of the manuscript can be obtained from the first author upon request to peter.wuehr@tu-dortmund.de.
Institutions
- Technische Universitat Dortmund