A common mechanism behind distractor-response and response-effect binding?

Abstract

Short-term bindings between responses and events in the environment ensure efficient behavioral control. This notion holds true for two particular types of binding: bindings between responses and response-irrelevant distractor stimuli that are present at the time of responding, and also for bindings between responses and the effects they cause. Although both types of binding have been extensively studied in the past, little is known about their interrelation. In three experiments, we analyzed both types of binding processes in a distractor-response binding design and in a response-effect binding design, which yielded two central findings: (1) Distractor-response binding and response-effect binding effects were observed not only in their native, but also in the corresponding “non-native” design, and (2) a manipulation of retrieval delay affected both types of bindings in a similar way. We suggest that a general and unselective mechanism is responsible for integrating own responses with a large variety of stimuli.