Stimulus-Response Compatibility Effects in Foot Responses to Visual Motion Stimuli Along the Vertical and Sagittal Axes

It has been demonstrated that reaction times are shorter when the stimulus characteristic corresponds to the response characteristic when compared with no correspondence. This effect is called the stimulus-response compatibility effect. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the compatibility effect between a visual motion stimulus and a pedal response. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants responded to visual stimuli moving along the horizontal and sagittal axes, respectively, with right and left feet. The results revealed three findings: (1) the compatibility effect occurs in correspondence between the above/below directions of the stimuli and right/left foot responses; (2) the compatibility effect occurs in correspondence between the back/front directions of the stimuli and right/left foot responses when the stimuli were presented above the viewpoint of a participant; and (3) responses with the left foot are more affected by the locational characteristic of visual stimuli than the right foot. The results of this study are complementary to previous results; however, we report some novel results that have not been considered in previous studies.