Binding of response-independent task rules

Schiltenwolf, Moritz; Dignath, David; Hazeltine, Eliot · 2024 · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

DOI: 10.3758/s13423-024-02465-9

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study investigates whether response-independent task rules—cognitive instructions translating stimuli into motor output without specific response mappings—can be bound to episodic memory and retrieved based on contextual cues. While binding theories suggest that features of an episode are integrated and retrieved upon re-encountering, previous research focused primarily on bindings involving specific responses. The authors aimed to determine if abstract task rules, which remain constant across different response options, are similarly bound to visual context features. This question addresses a gap in understanding how cognitive control mechanisms operate independently of specific stimulus-response mappings. To test this, the authors conducted three experiments using a task-switching paradigm where participants performed one of three spatial operations (clockwise, counter-clockwise, or across) on a 2x2 grid. Crucially, the tasks shared the same pool of responses, and sequential response repetitions were eliminated by design, ensuring that any binding effects could not be attributed to response retrieval. Visual context features (colorized background patterns) either repeated or changed across trials. Experiment 1 used a trial order with 50% task and context repetition probability. Experiment 2 adjusted the design so that task and context occurrences were independent of the previous trial (33% repetition probability) to remove incentives to prepare for the previous task. Experiment 3 further controlled for potential stimulus-to-stimulus bindings by using two distinct task cues per task and ensuring task cues never repeated across trials. The results across all three experiments consistently showed that task-switch costs were significantly larger on trials where the visual context repeated from the previous trial compared to trials where the context changed. In Experiment 1, switch costs were 131 ms for context repetitions versus 109 ms for context changes. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with switch costs of 72 ms versus 58 ms, respectively. Experiment 3, which controlled for cue-specific bindings, also found larger switch costs for context repetitions (129 ms) compared to context changes (115 ms). These findings indicate that when the context repeats, the task rule from the previous trial is retrieved; if the current trial requires a task switch, this retrieved rule conflicts with the current demand, increasing switch costs. The significance of these findings lies in demonstrating that binding processes extend beyond specific stimulus-response mappings to include abstract, response-independent task rules. This generalizes previous binding accounts to task-switching situations where tasks share response options, suggesting that episodic memory integration includes higher-level cognitive control states. The results support the view that task sets are not merely configurations of stimulus-response links but involve bindings of the rules governing stimulus-to-action translation, which are sensitive to contextual cues.

Key finding

Task-switch costs were significantly larger when visual context features repeated from the previous trial, indicating that response-independent task rules are bound to and retrieved with context features.

Methodology

lab_experiment

Sample size: 252

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed. Discovered via author_sweep_intake on 2026-05-28.

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-10; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• task switching
• executive function