The choice is yours: Binding and retrieval of free-choice responses

Feature binding has emerged as an important mechanism in the coordination of human action control. Apparently, the simple mechanisms of binding of individual features and retrieval of recently integrated episodes play a significant role in the selection, initiation, and execution of goal-directed actions. Importantly, ideomotor approaches suggest that the stimulus-driven (i.e., forced-choice) as well as the internally generated (i.e., free-choice) activation of a response representation should lead to facilitation of that response in behavior. Against these predictions we separately investigated binding and retrieval of free-choice response in modified response-response binding tasks. In Experiment 1a, we investigated whether binding and retrieval of responses influence a free-choice action and found that response-response binding effects influenced performance in a current free-choice action. In Experiment 1b, we investigated whether a free-choice response can initiate the process of event file retrieval and found response-response binding effects, indicating that event file retrieval can be triggered by a free-choice response. In Experiment 1c, we investigated whether a free-choice response can be bound to another response and found response-response binding effects, indicating shared representations of free-choice and forced-choice responses. These findings are in line with ideomotor approaches suggesting that the same mechanisms of binding and retrieval also operate on representations of free-choice actions. They further demonstrate that both processes can dynamically operate across extended action sequences that integrate both forced-choice and free-choice actions, thereby highlighting their general role in flexible action control. Data of the experiments are available at OSF ( https://osf.io/t7pjb/?view_only=1af9b6ce0c1c4e19ab7a79a4b0bd176f ), and none of the experiments was preregistered.