Integrating action-effect episodes into long-term memory as a function of control

We interact with our environment through our actions, sampling information from environmental effects following them. Here, we asked how control over action and ensuing effects influences long-term memory for the effect content and the actions that produced them. In three experiments, participants carried out spatial actions, which produced the movement of a box wherein an image was presented. The box either moved spatially congruent or incongruent with the participants' action. Memory for images was later tested in a recognition test, and we additionally probed whether participants retrieved the action used to produce an image when being cued with said image. In a fourth experiment, we kept the spatial effect component constant to directly investigate bindings between action and effect features. We found evidence for a facilitating influence of congruency on declarative memory for effect content and on action retrieval by perceived effect content. Moreover, if effect content was enriched with a spatial feature, such retrieval was only observed if that feature was spatially congruent rather than incongruent to the action that had produced that content. Thus, features of a single action-effect episode can be integrated and represented in long-term memory, and the formation of these representations is facilitated by control. We propose that feature bindings can be conceptualized as source memory, representing how environmental effects were produced. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).