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When our actions yield predictable consequences in the environment, our eyes often already saccade towards the locations we expect these consequences to appear at. Such spontaneous anticipatory saccades occur based on bi-directional associations between action and effect formed by prior experience. That is, our eye movements are guided by expectations derived from prior learning history. Anticipatory saccades presumably reflect a proactive effect monitoring process that prepares a later comparison of expected and actual effect. Here, we examined whether anticipatory saccades emerged under forced choice conditions when only actions but not target stimuli were predictive of future effects and whether action mode (forced choice vs. free choice, i.e., stimulus-based vs. stimulus-independent choice) affected proactive effect monitoring. Participants produced predictable visual effects on the left/right side via forced choice and free choice left/right key presses. Action and visual effect were spatially compatible in one half of the experiment and spatially incompatible in the other half. Irrespective of whether effects were predicted by target stimuli in addition to participants' actions, in both action modes, we observed anticipatory saccades towards the location of future effects. Importantly, neither the frequency, nor latency or amplitude of these anticipatory saccades significantly differed between forced choice and free choice action modes. Overall, our findings suggest that proactive effect monitoring of future action consequences, as reflected in anticipatory saccades, is comparable between forced choice and free choice action modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When an action contingently yields a predictable effect, we form bi-directional actioneffect associations that allow us to anticipate both the location and timing of our actions' effects. This is evident in anticipatory eye movements towards the future effect's location which are performed earlier when the effect's delay is short rather than long. Such anticipatory eye movements reflect a proactive process of effect monitoring which prepares a comparison of expected and actual effects. Here, in two online eye tracking experiments, we manipulated effect locations (spatially compatible vs. incompatible in one half) and effect delays (short vs. long) to determine whether in-laboratory effects could be reliably replicated online using participants' individual webcams. Extending prior research, we further compared irrelevant (Experiment 1) to relevant effects (response to effect feature; Experiment 2). In contrast to prior in-laboratory studies, participants anticipatorily looked towards future effects above chance only when effects were relevant. Post-experiment questions suggested that online-participants intentionally ignore irrelevant information to optimize task performance. Nevertheless, replicating in-laboratory experiments, both for relevant and irrelevant effects, participants' first saccade towards a future effect occurred earlier for the short rather than the long effect delay. Thus, we demonstrate that anticipatory eye movements reflecting a time-sensitive proactive effect monitoring process can reliably be assessed both in-laboratory as well as online. However, when investigating anticipatory saccade frequencies online, additional aspects like effect relevance have to be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both active response execution and passive listening to verbal codes (a form of instruction) in single prime trials lead to item-specific repetition priming effects when stimuli re-occur in single probe trials. This holds for task-specific classification (stimulus–classification, SC priming, e.g., apple–small) and action (stimulus–action, SA priming, e.g., apple–right key press). To address the influence of expectation on item-specific SC and SA associations, we tested if item-specific SC and SA priming effects were modulated by the instructed probability of re-encountering individual SC or SA mappings (25% vs. 75% instructed switch probability). Importantly, the experienced item-specific switch probability was always 50%. In Experiment 1 (N = 78), item-specific SA/SC switch expectations affected SA, but not SC priming effects exclusively following active response execution. Experiment 2 (N = 40) was designed to emphasize SA priming by only including item-specific SC repetitions. This yielded stronger SA priming for 25% vs. 75% expected switch probability, both following response execution as in Experiment 1 and also following verbally coded SA associations. Together, these results suggest that SA priming effects, that is, the encoding and retrieval of SA associations, is modulated by item-specific switch expectation. Importantly, this expectation effect cannot be explained by item-specific associative learning mechanisms, as stimuli were primed and probed only once and participants experienced item-specific repetitions/switches equally often across stimuli independent of instructed switch probabilities. This corroborates and extends previous results by showing that SA priming effects are modulated by expectation not only based on experienced item-specific switch probabilities, but also on mere instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human behavior is guided by prior experience such as bindings between stimuli and responses. Experimentally, this is evident in performance changes when features of the stimulus-response episode reoccur either in the short-term or in the long-term. So far, effects of short-term and long-term bindings are assumed to be independent from one another. In a large-scale re-analysis of eight item-specific stimulus-response priming experiments that orthogonally varied task-specific classifications and actions in the short-term (trial N-1 to trial N) and, item-specifically, in the long-term (lag of several trials), we tested this independence assumption. In detail, we tested whether short-term experiences (repetitions of classification and action features in two consecutive trials) affected the retrieval of item-specific long-term stimulus-classification (S-C) and stimulus-action (S-A) bindings as well as potential long-term C-A bindings. The retrieval of item-specific long-term S-C bindings (i.e., the size of item-specific S-C priming effects) was affected by the persisting activation of classifications from trial N-1 (short-term priming). There were no further interactions between short-term experiences and long-term bindings. These results suggest a feature-specific, selective influence of short-term priming on long-term binding retrieval (e.g., based on shared feature representations). In contrast, however, we found evidence against an influence of short-term C-A bindings on long-term binding retrieval. This finding suggests that the processes contributing to short-term priming and long-term binding retrieval are dissociable from short-term binding and retrieval processes. Our results thus inform current theories on how short-term and long-term bindings are bound and retrieved (e.g., the BRAC framework). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been proposed that cognitive control processes may be implemented in a contextually appropriate manner through the encoding, and cued retrieval, of associations between stimuli and the control processes that were active during their encoding, forming "stimulus-control bindings" as part of episodic event files. Prior work has found strong evidence for such a mechanism by observing behavioral effects of stimulus-control bindings based on a single pairing (one-shot learning). Here, we addressed the important question of how durable these one-shot stimulus-control bindings are. Over three experiments, we investigated the durability of one-shot stimulus-control bindings in relation to both the passage of time and the number of intervening events between the encoding (prime) and retrieval (probe) of the stimulus-control bindings. We found that stimulus-control bindings are quite robust to temporal decay, lasting at least up to 5 minutes in the absence of similar intervening events. By contrast, binding effects were more short-lived in the face of interference from the encoding of similar events between the prime and probe, with a maximum duration of ~2 minutes. Together, these results shed new light on the characteristics of the binding mechanisms underlying the integration of internal control processes in episodic event files and highlight that interference, rather than temporal decay, may be the main limiting factor on long-term effects of item-specific one-shot control learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stimulus–response (S–R) associations consist of two independent components: Stimulus–classification (S–C) and stimulus–action (S–A) associations. Here, we examined whether these S–C and S–A associations were modulated by cognitive control operations. In two item-specific priming experiments, we systematically manipulated the proportion of trials in which item-specific S–C and/or S–A mappings repeated or switched between the single encoding (prime) and single retrieval (probe) instance of each stimulus (i.e., each stimulus appeared only twice). Thus, we assessed the influence of a list-level proportion switch manipulation on the strength of item-specific S–C and S–A associations. Participants responded slower and committed more errors when item-specific S–C or S–A mappings switched rather than repeated between prime and probe (i.e., S–C/S–A switch effects). S–C switch effects were larger when S–C repetitions rather than switches were frequent on the list-level. Similarly, S–A switch effects were modulated by S–A switch proportion. Most importantly, our findings rule out contingency learning and temporal learning as explanations of the observed results and point towards a conflict adaptation mechanism that selectively adapts the encoding and/or retrieval for each S–R component. Finally, we outline how cognitive control over S–R associations operates in the context of item-specific priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study, for the first time, investigated the influence of time delays and the spatial arrangement of products on the quality rating of wine bottles in an online wine shop. For this purpose, an online shop was simulated in which participants selected various wine bottles from an overview page. After participants had selected a wine bottle, an enlarged version was presented after a system response time of either 200 or 1400 ms. Participants then viewed and rated wine bottles from various locations on the website overview page. Results showed that the average quality ratings after the short and the long system response time did not differ. However, products presented on the left or the right side of the overview page received worse ratings than wine bottles presented in the centre. By explicitly comparing the influence of temporal delays and spatial arrangement of products on quality ratings in an online shop, we derived best practice suggestions for the interface design in online shopping environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that stimulus–response associations comprise associations between the stimulus and the task (a classification task in particular) and the stimulus and the action performed as a response. These associations, contributing to the phenomenon of priming, affect behaviour after a delay of hundreds of trials and they are resistant against overwriting. Here, we investigate their longevity, testing their effects in short-term (seconds after priming) and long-term (24 hr and 1 week after priming) memory. Three experiments demonstrated that both stimulus–classification (S-C) and stimulus–action (S-A) associations show long-term memory effects. The results also show that retrieval of these associations can be modulated by the amount of engagement on the same task between encoding and retrieval, that is, how often participants performed this task between prime and probe sessions. Finally, results show that differences in processing time during encoding are linked to the amount of conflict caused during retrieval of S-C, but not S-A associations. These findings add new information to the existing model of priming as a memory system and pose questions about the interactions of priming and top-down control processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to stimuli leads to the formation of stimulus-response (S-R) associations that allow stimuli to subsequently automatically trigger associated responses. A recent study has shown that S-R associations are established not only by active task execution, but also by the simultaneous presentation of stimuli and verbal codes denoting responses in the absence of own action [Pfeuffer et al. (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 43:328-347, 2017)]. Here, we used an item-specific priming paradigm to investigate whether the stimulus part of S-R associations formed based on task execution and verbal codes is represented in abstract or specific format by examining whether S-R associations are retrieved for perceptually different forms of the same stimulus or not. Between the prime and probe instance of a stimulus, its format switched from image to word or vice versa. We found that, irrespective of whether stimuli were primed by task execution or verbal coding, performance was impaired when S-R mappings switched rather than repeated between the prime and probe instance of a stimulus. The finding that prime S-R mappings affected probe performance even when stimulus format switched indicates that stimuli were represented in abstract form in S-R association based on both task execution and verbal coding. Furthermore, we found no performance benefits for stimuli primed and probed in the same format rather than different formats, suggesting that stimuli were not additionally represented in specific format. Overall, our findings demonstrate the adaptability of automatized behaviors and indicate that abstract stimulus representations allow S-R associations to generalize across perceptually different stimulus formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Our environment is governed by contingencies between our actions and their consequences. These contingencies allow us to learn which action causes which consequence. Crucially, this learning history also imprints on our eye movements and guides our attention based on the expectations we derive from it. Our eyes often already saccade towards the locations we expect the consequences of our actions to appear at later on. The resulting anticipatory saccades are thought to reflect a proactive monitoring process that prepares a later comparison of expected and actual action consequence. Here, we investigated whether participants anticipated the exact locations (near vs. far) their actions' future consequences would appear at and proactively saccaded towards these locations or whether participants only anticipated their actions' consequences to appear in a certain rough direction. In line with prior findings, participants looked significantly more often in the direction of their actions' future consequences than in another direction. However, contrary to our assumptions, the length of participants' manual responses (short vs. long movement) rather than the exact location of the respective action consequence had a strong influence on the amplitude of participants' anticipatory saccades towards their actions' future consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]