Gating features into actions II

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The Binding and Retrieval in Action Control framework (BRAC, Frings et al., 2020) suggests that (1) episodic feature binding and retrieval provide a unitary perspective on basic processes underlying human action-control, that (2) binding and retrieval should be conceptualized as theoretically separate processes, and that (3) binding and retrieval are independently affected by top-down control and bottom-up factors. The BRAC framework thus offers an integrative and innovative framework that can be used to explain a whole array of paradigm-specific experimental effects. In the first phase of the Research Unit, this project specifically contributed to specifying the BRAC framework by analyzing binding and retrieval separately. In the second phase of this project, we continue our approach to disentangle binding versus retrieval and thus better understand how ‘features are gated into actions’. Related to the general approach of the Research Unit’s second phase we follow two different strategies here. First, we will further specify binding versus retrieval. Although the experiments of the first phase provided compelling evidence that binding and retrieval processes can be separated based on behavioral partial repetition cost effects in response time and/or accuracy we also hit the limit at particular instances. Thus, we will expand our methodical approach and investigate the electrophysiological (EEG) correlates of integration, disintegration, and retrieval processes related to stimulus-response (S-R) binding. We think – especially against the background of recent studies using the EEG in binding paradigms – that we must further pinpoint feature binding versus episodic retrieval. Second, we will test BRAC’s reach by applying the binding versus retrieval logic to a different experimental paradigm from a literature that does not focus on action control, namely the visual search literature. In particular, we will look into intertrial priming effects (e.g., Zehetleitner et al., 2012) in visual search and try to generate evidence for the separation of binding and retrieval there, thereby extending the explanatory value of the BRAC framework.