Lengthening the duration of response execution does not modulate blindness to action-compatible stimuli.

Action-compatible blindness refers to the finding that target stimuli are perceived less frequently if they are presented during the planning or execution of a compatible action (e.g., a left arrow presented during a left manual key press) than during an incompatible action (Müsseler & Hommel, 1997 a, b). We investigated the effect of lengthening the response execution phase in the action-compatible blindness paradigm by requiring subjects to tap a response key once or three times on the assumption that tapping three times would increase the duration of the execution phase of the response. Prior research (e.g., Stevanovski, Oriet, & Jolicoeur, 2002; Wühr & Müsseler, 2001) has shown that larger blindness effects are observed for targets presented during the execution phase of a response than after the response has been made. We investigated whether a larger blindness effect would be observed in the three-tap condition than in the one-tap condition, or whether lengthening the duration of the response would extend the time course of the blindness effect. Neither of these possibilities was supported by the data irrespective of whether the number of taps to be made was blocked or mixed within a block of trials. The results are discussed in terms of current accounts of action-compatible blindness and the possible cognitive differences between making a single response and repeating a response.