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Summary: RESEARCH ARTICLE
Lisa Aziz-Zadeh Æ Marco Iacoboni Æ Eran Zaidel
Hemispheric sensitivity to body stimuli in simple reaction time
Received: 18 April 2005 / Accepted: 10 August 2005 / Published online: 17 November 2005
Ó Springer-Verlag 2005
Abstract Previous research indicates that people respond
fastest when the motor response is (spatially, function-
ally, anatomically, or otherwise) congruent to the visual
stimulus. This effect, called ideomotor compatibility, is
thought to be expressed in motor areas. Congruence
occurs when the stimulus and response share some
dimensions in their internal representations. If the
ideomotor compatibility hypothesis were true, we would
expect facilitation when right hand stimuli are presented
to the left hemisphere, or left hand stimuli are presented
to the right hemisphere. To address this issue, we con-
ducted a simple reaction time experiment with lateral-
ized targets. Participants were instructed to press a
button as soon as a target was observed. The target
stimulus was a left hand, a right hand, or a neutral
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