The influence of event segmentation by context on stimulus–response binding.

Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance, vol. 49, pp. 355–369

Abstract

A core characteristic of auditory stimuli is that they develop over time. Referring to the event segmentation theory, we assume that the on- and offset of a contextual sound indicates the start and end of an event. As a consequence, stimuli and responses appearing within a common auditory context may be integrated more likely/strongly, forming so-called event files, than those appearing in different auditory contexts. In two experiments, this hypothesis was tested using the negative priming paradigm and the distractor-response binding paradigm. In prime-probe presentations, participants identified target sounds via keypresses while ignoring distractor sounds. Additional sine tones acted as the context in the prime, whereas the probe context was silence. In the common context condition, the context started with the prime sounds and ended with the prime response. In the changing context condition, the context started with the prime sounds but changed to another tone after the offset of the prime sounds. Results from both experiments revealed a larger stimulus-response binding effect in the common than in the changing context condition. We conducted a control experiment to test the alternative account of contextual similarity between the prime and the probe. Together, our results suggest that common context can temporally segment stimuli and responses into event files, providing evidence of common context as a binding principle. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Authors 5

1. Ruyi Qiu

   University of Passau

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Passau, Psychology and Human-Machine Interaction

   University of Passau

2. Malte Möller

   University of Passau

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Passau, Psychology and Human-Machine Interaction

   University of Passau

3. Iring Koch Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University, Psychology I: Cognitive and Experimental Psychology

   RWTH Aachen University

4. Christian Frings

   Universität Trier

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Trier, Cognitive Psychology Unit

   University of Trier

5. Susanne Mayr

   University of Passau

   Affiliation as printed

   University of Passau, Psychology and Human-Machine Interaction

   University of Passau