Feature (Un)Binding and Retrieval in Action Discarding

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Wilfried Kunde
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 393269228

The BRAC framework assumes that planning an action comprises of the temporary binding of the perceptual features of the corresponding action. Such integrated feature representations are called action files. This project studies how action files are amended in action discarding. Action discarding can occur for different reasons, such as when an initially planned action is no more needed, or must be withheld on its way to execution, or must be terminated while being carried out. Such discarding can be construed in different ways such as inhibition of individual actions files, or general blocking of efferent activities, or as unbinding of the action’s features. These models make different predictions about how discarding a certain action impacts performance of other, feature-overlapping, actions. Consequently, we will test these models in experiments in which participants plan a certain action which has to be discarded at varying points in time. Performance in another feature-overlapping action will indicate how the initial action file has become altered by discarding. On top of assessing performance we will record electroencephalogram (EEG). We will bolster behavioural evidence by analysing indicative EEG parameters primarily based on time-frequency decomposed EEG activity and multivariate pattern analyses. Altogether this project will specify the BRAC framework by looking at inhibitory processes through the lens of BRACs core mechanisms and by revealing their neurophysiological correlates.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2790: Binding and Retrieval in Action Control
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Christian Beste; Privatdozent Dr. Bernhard Pastötter