Binding of Task-Irrelevant Action Features and Auditory Action Effects

Abstract

Discrete task-relevant features of an overt response, such as response location, are bound to, and retrieved by coincidentally occurring auditory stimuli. Here we studied whether continuous, task-irrelevant response features like force or response duration also become bound to, and retrieved by such stimuli. In two experiments we asked participants to carry out a pinch which produced a certain auditory effect in a prime part of each trial. In a subsequent probe part, tones served as imperative stimuli which either repeated or changed as compared to the effect tone in the prime. We conjectured that the repetition of tones should result in more similar responses in terms of force output and duration as compared to tone changes. Most parameters did not show notable indications for such similarity increases, including peak force or area under force curve, though the correlation between response durations in prime and probe was higher when tones repeated rather than changed from prime to probe. We discuss these results regarding perceptual discriminability and deployment of attention to different nominally task-irrelevant aspects of pinch responses.

Binding and retrieval of temporal action features: Probing the precision level of feature representations in action planning.

“…This provides per se a different range of possible effect sizes for long and short key presses. This reading of the data is in line with the observation of only binding and retrieval effects for metric RDs in previous work (Pfister et al, 2022;Varga et al, 2022). By integrating long RDs into the design of the present study, we were able to corroborate the vague evidence for these binding effects.…”

“…However, the integration of metric response features does not appear to be restricted to relevant response features. Our results complement subtle evidence for the integration of metric response features derived from experiments in which RD was irrelevant to the task (Pfister et al, 2022; Varga et al, 2022).…”

“…If continuous information is integrated into action plans, the repetition of the stimulus should retrieve the continuous action duration of the previous response, thus increasing the similarity of the successive RDs as compared to situations with changing stimuli. Tentative evidence indeed points to this direction (Pfister et al, 2022;Varga et al, 2022). Repeating a stimulus across trials yielded more similar RDs as compared to a situation with stimulus changes across trials.…”

Episodic Binding and Retrieval in Sequences of Discrete Movements – Evidence from Grasping Actions

“…By examining digits’ separation and object roll we were able to test the BRAC framework for motor planning and motor control processes, respectively. Recent studies also investigated response features other than reaction time in the context of binding and retrieval, e.g., percentage of errors or applied force ( Pfister et al, 2022 ; Varga et al, 2022 ). If there are comparable effects for sequences of discrete actions as for single discrete actions, we expect better performance if (a) object features are constant on a global level, (b) object features are completely repeated within a situation of randomly mixed object features, and (c) no feature at all is repeated within a situation of randomly mixed object features.…”

Core Mechanisms in Action Control: Binding and Retrieval

“…Finally, Pfister and colleagues (2022) extend this line of empirical evidence to binding and retrieval of response durations for continuous movements, yet the effects appear subtle. Limits of binding and retrieval for continuous, task-irrelevant response features are revealed by Varga et al (2022). The authors investigated pinch responses that comprise several task-irrelevant continuous response features such as duration and force.…”