Freely-selected and forced-choice responses bind with relevant object-occupied locations in visuospatial tasks.

Abstract

Past work has shown that cued manual responses in visuo-identity tasks bind to irrelevant stimulus features, present at the time these responses were executed (prime trial). These response bindings manifested their existence via impacts on later related processing (probe trial). Here, we extended this prior research by showing that response binding is likely a pervasive processing characteristic. We saw that uncertain prime-trial responses (i.e., free-choice, forced-choice) did bind to the relevant "location" feature of the prime stimulus in a visuospatial task (i.e., R-L binding). Overall, R-L binding evidence was better for within-hand than for between-hand probe-trial finger competitions and better for probe trial response selection preferences than for their reaction time (RT) data. R-L binding evidence was entirely absent, however, for forced-choice probe trials. Evidence that the prime response binds to irrelevant prime display features (i.e., prime stimulus identity [R-I binding]) was virtually absent. Other results indicated that R-I likely exists, but that its probe-trial manifestation is prevented by the involvement of R-L binding. Response binding impacts on later processing should be considered when interpreting RT data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).