Kiesel, A. 1 , Waszak, F. 2 & Pfister, R. 1
1 University of Wuerzburg
2 University Paris Descartes & CNRS
Research on human action has extensively covered controlled and automatic processes in the transformation of stimulus information into motor action, and how conflict between both systems is solved. However, the question of whether automatic S-R translation per se depends on top-down control states has received comparatively little attention. The present study addressed this issue by manipulating top-down control state (instructed S-R mapping) and automatic bottom-up processing (retrieval of S-R memory traces) independently from each other. Using a color/shape task-switching paradigm, we compared cross-talk triggered by distractor stimuli, for which the instructed S-R mapping and the S-R associations compiled at the beginning of the experiment matched, with the cross-talk triggered by distractor stimuli, for which (re)instructed mapping and compiled S-R associations did not match. The results show that the latter kind of distractors did not yield any cross-talk at all, demonstrating that automatic S-R retrieval only takes place if the S-R associations concur with the currently valid S-R mapping.