A binding perspective on task and language switching: Exploring the influence of a task-irrelevant context on episodic retrieval

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Human behaviour is characterised by its great flexibility. We are, for example, able to switch flexibly from one task to another or from one language to another in the middle of a conversation. However, this flexibility also comes with costs. In both task-switching and language-switching situations, subjects perform better in a task or language repetition compared to a task or language switch. In terms of a feature-binding perspective, such a repetition benefit can be explained by the assumption that the repetition of one feature retrieves the preceding episode (i.e., a binding of task, stimuli and response features) and thus leads to a positive priming of a task or language. Importantly, it seems that not only task-relevant features can retrieve a previous episode, but also task-irrelevant features, which we termed “context” features. In the present project, we explore the role of the task-irrelevant context on the episodic retrieval of a previous feature bindings. Among other things, we are interested in temporal aspects of episodic retrieval, for example, the question of when the task-irrelevant context (e.g., the font colour of a word or a coloured word background) must be presented in order to effectively retrieve a previous episode. Furthermore, we investigate whether a task-irrelevant context can retrieve only a single episode or multiple episodes. To this end, we introduce a context-task contingency in a task-switching paradigm. One of the two tasks (e.g., size decision: is an object bigger or smaller than a shoe box) is thereby more often combined with one context feature (e.g., a red word background) than with the other context feature (blue word background). In this way, an association between context and task is likely to emerge, so that the repetition of a context feature may not only retrieve the most recent episode, but also the associated task. In various experiments, we examine the interplay between feature binding and episodic retrieval on the one hand and associative learning of contingencies on the other. In addition, we will transfer the feature-binding perspective into an applied setting by trying to promote the learning of new words. In doing so, we aim to use the repetition or switch of contextual features to specifically support the retrieval of a correct word and reduce the retrieval of previous incorrect responses. In this way, our project contributes to describing real-life phenomena through a feature-binding perspective.