Simon Task
Simon's spatial stimulus-response compatibility task. Participants respond to stimulus color while ignoring its spatial location, demonstrating automatic processing of task-irrelevant spatial information.
Participants see colored circles (default: red or blue) appearing at different horizontal positions on the screen. They respond to the color using left/right shift keys, ignoring the horizontal position. The spatial position creates compatibility conditions: compatible (color and position match), incompatible (color and position conflict), or neutral (stimuli appear near center). The task measures selective attention and inhibition of automatic spatial responses.
Measures: Selective attention, inhibitory control, color processing, spatial stimulus-response compatibility, reaction time
- Colorblind individuals may have difficulty with default red-blue colors. Alternative color pairs (e.g., yellow/blue) can be configured via parameters.
- Demo mode uses 3 repetitions (42 trials, ~3-4 minutes) vs standard 10 repetitions (140 trials, ~10 minutes)
| reps | Number of repetitions of the (10-stimulus) design (default: 10) |
| targsize | radius, in pixels, of target circles (default: 50) |
| leftcolor | Color name of left color. Accepts hundreds of color names. See appendix of PEBL manual (default: red) |
| rightcolor | Color name of right color. Accepts hundreds of color names. See appendix of PEBL manual (default: blue) |
| responsemode | Response mode: auto (platform-aware), arrowLR (left/right arrows), keyboardShift, keyboardSafe, mousebutton, mousetarget, touchtarget, userselect (custom key) (default: auto) |
| practicetrials | Number of practice trials before main test (default: 10) |
| Validation | not-validated |
| Psychometric data | Not available |
| Normative data | Not available |
| subnum | trial | type | pos | compatible | resp | corr | time | rt |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| example | 1 | 2 | 50 | 1 | <rshift> | 1 | 19130 | 364 |
| example | 2 | 2 | -200 | -1 | <rshift> | 1 | 20181 | 479 |
| example | 3 | 1 | -50 | 1 | <lshift> | 1 | 21460 | 402 |
| example | 4 | 2 | -100 | -1 | <lshift> | 0 | 22648 | 379 |
| example | 5 | 2 | -200 | -1 | <lshift> | 0 | 23718 | 523 |