Adding meaningful distal action effects in feature binding

TL;DR

The study investigates whether meaningful distal action effects influence how features of actions are bound together in memory.

Contribution

The study introduces meaningful distal action effects in feature binding tasks to test their impact on action control theories.

Findings

Meaningful distal action effects did not significantly influence feature binding effects.

Results suggest that stimulus-based action modes dominate in standard S-R binding tasks.

Distal action effects may not be sufficient to terminate event files in these tasks.

Abstract

Event files that bind features of stimuli, responses, and action effects figure prominently in contemporary views of action control. When a feature repeats, the previous event file including this feature is retrieved and can then influence current performance. It is still unclear, however, what terminates an event file. A tacit assumption is that registering the distal (e.g., visual, or auditory) sensory consequences of an action (i.e., the “action effect”) terminates the event file, thereby making it available for retrieval. Yet recently Frings et al. (2023) tested different distal action-effect conditions in standard stimulus–response (S-R) binding tasks and observed no modulation of S-R binding effects. It is conceivable though that the impact of distal action effects on feature binding hinges on the action mode of agents with intention-based mode (as compared to a stimulus-based mode) of action particularly emphasizing the possible impact of a meaningful distal action effect. Thus, we analyzed semantically meaningful distal action effects (participants switched simulated light bulbs on and off) in three experiments (Ntotal = 181). We found no clear impact of meaningful additional action effect presence or contingency on feature binding effects. The present study thus corroborates the notion that especially S-R binding tasks induce a stimulus-based action mode, in which proximal action effects are used for event file termination.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13414-025-03092-9.

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