You better stop! Binding “stop” tags to irrelevant stimulus features Carina Giesen and Klaus Rothermund Department of Psychology, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Jena, Germany We investigated whether the basic process of integrating stimuli (and their features) with simul- taneously executed responses transfers to situations in which one does not respond to a stimulus. In three experiments, a stop-signal task was combined with a sequential priming paradigm to test whether irrelevant stimulus features become associated with a “stop” tag. Stopping a simple response during the prime trial delayed responding and facilitated stopping in the probe if the same irrelevant stimulus feature was repeated in the probe. These repetition priming effects were independent of the relation between the to-be-executed (or to-be-stopped) responses in the prime and probe, indicating that “stop” tags are global (“stop all responses!”) rather than being response-related (e.g., “stop left response!”). Keywords: Stimulus–response binding; Event files; Episodic retrieval; Response suppression; Stop- signal task. When the traffic light turns green, we walk; when we notice something falling down, we catch it; when we want to open a door, we push the handle. Most of the time, we are not even aware of performing these actions, and we do not have to be: because we have learnt to associate stimuli (or types of stimuli) with specific responses. Recent instance-based theories (e.g., Logan, 1988) propose that for our cognitive system the mere temporal coactivation of a per- ceived stimulus and a selected response is suffi- cient to integrate these elements into a transient episodic memory structure—that is, a stimulus– response (S–R) episode or event file (Hommel, 1998). Repeating an element of an event file will then automatically retrieve the entire S–R episode, including the associated response. Automatic response retrieval from memory allows for an efficient regulation of behaviour because it is much faster than deliberately gener- ating a response (Logan, 1988). However, not only can relevant (target) stimulus and response features become integrated into an S–R episode (e.g., Denkinger & Koutstaal, 2009; Hommel, 1998, 2004; Horner & Henson, 2009, 2011; Logan, 1988; Waszak, Hommel, & Allport, 2003, 2005), but also even (task-)irrelevant stimulus features or entire distractor stimuli that merely accompany the target are bound with responses (i.e., distractor–response bindings; Rothermund, Wentura, & De Houwer, 2005). Subsequently, the (re-)presentation of the prime Correspondence should be addressed to Carina Giesen or Klaus Rothermund, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Department of Psychology, General Psychology II, Am Steiger 3, Haus 1, D-07743 Jena, Germany. E-mail: carina.giesen@uni-jena.de or klaus. rothermund@uni-jena.de The research reported in this article was supported by a grant of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to Klaus Rothermund (DFG RO 1272/6-1). We thank Gordon D. Logan, Nicolas Koranyi, and Birte Moeller for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript, Nils Meier for his support in programming the experiments, and our student research assistants for collecting the data. © 2013 The Experimental Psychology Society 809 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, 2014 Vol. 67, No. 4, 809–832, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2013.834372 Downloaded by [Thuringer University & Landesbibliothek] at 09:59 15 May 2014