Research on stimulus-response (S-R) associations as the basis of behavioral automaticity has a long history. Traditionally, it was assumed that S-R associations are formed as a consequence of the (repeated) co-occurrence of stimulus and response, that is, when participants act upon stimuli. Here, we demonstrate that S-R associations can also be established in the absence of action. In an item-specific priming paradigm, participants either classified everyday objects by performing a left or right key press (task-set execution) or they were verbally presented with information regarding an object's class and associated action while they passively viewed the object (verbal coding). Both S-R associations created by task-set execution and by verbal coding led to the later retrieval of both the stimulus-action component and the stimulus-classification component of S-R associations. Furthermore, our data indicate that both associations created by execution and by verbal coding are temporally stable and rather resilient against overwriting. The automaticity of S-R associations formed in the absence of action reveals the striking adaptability of human action control. (PsycINFO Database Record

According to ideomotor theory, human action control uses anticipations of one's own actions' future consequences, that is, action effect anticipations, as a means of triggering actions that will produce desired outcomes (e.g., Hommel, Müsseler, Aschersleben, & Prinz, 2001). Using the response-effect compatibility paradigm (Kunde, 2001), we demonstrate that the anticipation of one's own manual actions' future consequences not only triggers appropriate (i.e., instructed) actions, but simultaneously induces spontaneous (uninstructed) anticipatory saccades to the location of future action consequences. In contrast to behavioral response-effect compatibility effects that have been linked to processes of action selection and action planning, our results suggest that these anticipatory saccades serve the function of outcome evaluation, that is, the comparison of expected/intended and observed action outcomes. Overall, our results demonstrate the informational value of additionally analyzing uninstructed behavioral components complementary to instructed responses and allow us to specify essential mechanisms of the complex interplay between the manual and oculomotor control system in goal-directed action control. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Responding to stimuli leads to the formation of stimulus-response (S-R) associations that allow stimuli to subsequently automatically trigger associated responses. A recent study has shown that S-R associations are established not only by active task execution, but also by the simultaneous presentation of stimuli and verbal codes denoting responses in the absence of own action [Pfeuffer et al. (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 43:328-347, 2017)]. Here, we used an item-specific priming paradigm to investigate whether the stimulus part of S-R associations formed based on task execution and verbal codes is represented in abstract or specific format by examining whether S-R associations are retrieved for perceptually different forms of the same stimulus or not. Between the prime and probe instance of a stimulus, its format switched from image to word or vice versa. We found that, irrespective of whether stimuli were primed by task execution or verbal coding, performance was impaired when S-R mappings switched rather than repeated between the prime and probe instance of a stimulus. The finding that prime S-R mappings affected probe performance even when stimulus format switched indicates that stimuli were represented in abstract form in S-R association based on both task execution and verbal coding. Furthermore, we found no performance benefits for stimuli primed and probed in the same format rather than different formats, suggesting that stimuli were not additionally represented in specific format. Overall, our findings demonstrate the adaptability of automatized behaviors and indicate that abstract stimulus representations allow S-R associations to generalize across perceptually different stimulus formats.

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When our actions yield predictable consequences in the environment, our eyes often already saccade towards the locations we expect these consequences to appear at. Such spontaneous anticipatory saccades occur based on bi-directional associations between action and effect formed by prior experience. That is, our eye movements are guided by expectations derived from prior learning history. Anticipatory saccades presumably reflect a proactive effect monitoring process that prepares a later comparison of expected and actual effect. Here, we examined whether anticipatory saccades emerged under forced choice conditions when only actions but not target stimuli were predictive of future effects and whether action mode (forced choice vs. free choice, i.e., stimulus-based vs. stimulus-independent choice) affected proactive effect monitoring. Participants produced predictable visual effects on the left/right side via forced choice and free choice left/right key presses. Action and visual effect were spatially compatible in one half of the experiment and spatially incompatible in the other half. Irrespective of whether effects were predicted by target stimuli in addition to participants' actions, in both action modes, we observed anticipatory saccades towards the location of future effects. Importantly, neither the frequency, nor latency or amplitude of these anticipatory saccades significantly differed between forced choice and free choice action modes. Overall, our findings suggest that proactive effect monitoring of future action consequences, as reflected in anticipatory saccades, is comparable between forced choice and free choice action modes.