Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Previous research shows that performance is better when a highpitch is responded with up or right responses and a low pitch isresponded with down or left responses, called the spatial-pitchassociation of response codes (SPARC) effect. Despite the in-tuitive coupling of perception-action, studies investigating theSPARC effect have, however, used feedback to manipulate thestimulus-response mapping. Feedback contradicts the purposeof intuitive stimulus-response mapping by enabling short-termlearning. This study primarily investigates the role of feedbackon SPARC effect. We believe that feedback can facilitate in-congruent mapping and can, therefore, reduce the cost betweenincongruent and congruent mapping resulting in a diminishedSPARC effect. Our results, however, show that feedback hasno influence on the SPARC effect indicating that long-termassociations can not be overcome by short-term learning dueto robust perception-action coupling. Further, unlike previousstudies, we observed a strong horizontal SPARC effect in non-musicians as well.