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Updated: May 27, 2026

Irrelevant Stimuli and Action Control: Analyzing the Influence of Ignored Stimuli via the Distractor-Response Binding Paradigm
Published on: May 14, 2014
Differences in the strength of distractor inhibition do not affect distractor-response bindings
Carina Giesen1, Christian Frings, Klaus Rothermund
1Department of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Am Steiger 3, Haus 1, D-07743 Jena, Germany.
Abstract:
Distractor inhibition and distractor-response binding were investigated in two experiments by analyzing distractor repetition benefits and their interaction with response repetition effects in a sequential-priming paradigm. Distractor repetition benefits were larger for distractors that were incompatible with the to-be-executed response (task-related distractors) than for distractors that were not assigned to a response (neutral distractors), indicating that the strength of distractor inhibition was a function of response interference for the distractors. In contrast, the distractor-response bindings were found to be of equal strength for both task-related and neutral distractors. Thus, differences in the strengths of distractor inhibition did not affect the integration of distractors with responses into event files. Instead, our results suggest that distractor-response binding and distractor inhibition are independent mechanisms that are recruited for the automatization of behavior and action control.
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