The horserace between distractors and targets: Retrieval-based probe responding depends on distractor–target asynchrony

Abstract

According to models assuming binding of stimulus and response features, any features can be integrated into a compound (consisting of stimulus and response features) and stored in episodic memory, even features irrelevant to the task. Reencountering any part of such an episode can retrieve the entire episode (or “event file”), including the response. That is, even the repeated presentation of a distractor can retrieve a response given to a target stimulus accompanied by this very distractor. We analysed how distractor-induced retrieval of an event-file competes with the response generation process triggered by the target by varying the stimulus onset asynchrony of targets and distractors. In particular, we used a selection task with prime–probe sequences and asynchronous onset of distractors and targets on the probe. Distractor-induced retrieval was only observed if the probe distractor appeared before or simultaneously with the probe target but not if the probe distractor appeared after probe target onset.

Keywords:

• Distractor processing
• Episodic retrieval
• Feature-binding
• Negative priming
• Selection

Acknowledgments

The research reported in this article was supported by a grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to Christian Frings (FR 2133/1-2). We thank Franciska Ebert, Pinar Yapkac, Frank Mast, and Markus Streb for conducting the experiment.

Notes

¹Note that the stimulus configuration in the present experiment made it possible to select the target by position (targets were always presented at the screen centre) as well as by colour (the target was always red, whereas the distractors were green). In turn, perceptual grouping of targets and distracters was possibly weakened due to the use of different stimulus colours. We nevertheless chose this particular stimulus configuration to make our experiment comparable to most published experiments on distractor–response binding.