The boundaries of binding: Task-, response-, and modality-dependence for binding and retrieval in action control
Mon-HS2-Talk III-05
Presented by: Lars-Michael Schöpper
When responding to stimuli, it is assumed that response and stimulus features are bound into a common representation – a so-called event file. If any component of the event file repeats, the previous information is retrieved, affecting performance. Action control theories commonly assume binding and retrieval to be ubiquitous processes affecting all actions; in turn, the resulting so-called binding effects should be observed irrespective of task type, modality of the target, and so on. In this talk we present research that offers clear limitations to this assumption, by merging ideas and findings of action control with related fields such as attentional orienting and visual search. First, binding effects are task dependent, in that they typically do not occur in detection and localization performance. Second, it is possible to spur on the occurrence of binding effects in such task types, for example, by introducing specific response mappings. Third, some of these findings differ for auditory and visual targets, suggesting modality dependence for binding effects in action control. Importantly, all these limitations do not fit into a framework of omnipresent processes affecting all actions.
Keywords: action control, attentional orienting, stimulus-response binding