S-R or IOR, that is the question! About the occurrence of S-R binding and inhibition of return in sequential designs

• Applicant: Dr. Lars-Michael Schöpper
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 495420247

When responding to a stimulus with certain features it is assumed that response and stimulus features are integrated into a short episodic memory trace, known as an event file. If any of the event file’s components repeat, the previous event file is retrieved, affecting performance: This typically leads to benefits for full repetitions, but interference for partial repetitions. Action control theories assume that the processes that lead to these so-called stimulus-response (S-R) binding effects underlie all simple actions, that is, when participants intentionally respond to stimuli. In stark contrast, when participants signal the detection or location of stimuli in a sequence, a benefit for location changes arises, known as inhibition of return (IOR). Moreover, the IOR-effect emerging in said tasks is typically unaffected by feature repetitions or changes. Although this is a well-known finding in the attentional orienting literature, only recently it has been pointed out that these data patterns are completely incongruent with fundamental theoretical assumptions in action control research. The main focus of the current proposal is to highlight the boundaries of S-R binding approaches. To do so, a framework – based on years of research on attentional orienting and recent evidence – is developed and further elaborated. The proposed experiments aim at establishing clear-cut settings for observing S-R binding or IOR.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Christian Frings; Professor Dr. Markus Lappe