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Cognitive control theories describe the active maintenance of goal representations over temporal delays as central for adaptive behavior. Dynamic adaptations of goal representations are often measured as the congruency sequence effect (CSE), which describes a reduced congruency effect in trials following incongruent trials compared to congruent trials. Previous studies questioned active maintenance of CSEs and instead found that CSEs decrease rapidly over time (Duthoo et al., 2014; Egner et al., 2010). However, in these studies, CSEs can be attributed to both, control adaptations following conflict and binding effects due to repetition of stimulus (S) and response (R) features. In four experiments, we demonstrate that CSEs originating solely from control adaptions were not affected by temporal delays. Additional within-subject conditions partially replicated previous research showing a decrease in CSEs in task designs allowing for S-R binding effects and controlled for task complexity as a potential moderator. Together, results support theories which predict an active maintenance or retrieval of cognitive control.

Humans are able to intentionally forget declarative memory content as demonstrated in directed-forgetting (DF) experiments. Yet, only few studies assessed whether DF affects associations in procedural memory. We tested how the intention to remember/forget a stimulus affected the formation and/or retrieval of stimulus-response (S-R) associations. To do so, we combined an item-specific priming paradigm with list-method DF. We did not find an impact of the intention to remember/forget on either the retrieval of existing or the formation of new S-R associations: Although participants formed S-R associations (evident in decreasing RTs over stimulis’ prime instances), their persisting activation did not impact on RTs in a subsequent item-recognition-test. Potentially, processes contributing to item recognition impeded S-R retrieval. This finding is informative for future studies aiming to assess how intention differentially affects procedural and declarative memory. We formulate experimental design recommendations for future studies assessing the impact of DF on item-specific S-R associations.

Environmental stimuli caused by actions (i.e., effects) are perceived earlier than stimuli not caused by actions. Thisphenomenon is termed intentional binding (IB), and serves as implicit measure of sense of agency. We investigated the influenceof effect delay and temporal predictability on IB, measured with the classic clock procedure as the bias to perceive the effectas temporally shifted towards the action. For short delays, IB increased with delay (Experiment 1: 200 ms, 250 ms, 300 ms)and this initial increase declined for longer delays (Experiment 2: 100 ms, 250 ms, 400 ms). These results extend previousfindings showing IB to decrease with increasing delays for delay ranges of 250 ms to 650 ms. Further, the indication that IB,that is, sense of agency, might be maximal for different delays depending on the specific characteristics and context of actionand effect, has important implications for human-machine interfaces.

System delays affect user performance and experience when interacting with computers. We investigated the effectsof different prediction relations between delay duration and response requirements on user performance. In one experiment,delay duration predicted, to different degrees (50 % vs. 75 % vs. 100 %), the following system response. Predictabilitysubstantially increased users’ response speed, while adaptation was highly flexible, between different prediction regimes. Ina second experiment, users’ responses predicted system delay duration. Compared to the first experiment, users’ responsespeed was moderately increased, while the adaptation was rather inflexible across different prediction regimes. In a thirdexperiment, we directly compared both types of predictability. The results confirmed a stronger and more flexible adaptationeffect when time predicted the system response, compared to when users’ responses predicted time. These findings haveimportant implications for scheduling data transmission rates across different users in internet-based parallel computing.