Intertrial effects in visual search and action control: effects of stimulus–response-interval and intervening events

Action and attention are closely interlinked in human cognition, yet research on these domains has largely progressed independently. Recent theorizing suggests that intertrial effects in visual search and action control rely on similar short-lived memory traces. We investigated this assumption in two experiments using a paradigm combining elements from both domains. Each trial consisted of a prime and a probe response within a visual search display, enabling an assessment of feature-response binding effects based on changes or repetitions of target location, distractor features, and response. In Experiment 1 (n = 60), the interval between prime and probe displays (500, 1000, 3000 ms) was varied. Feature-response binding effects, reflected by the interaction between response relation and target location relation, decreased as the interval increased. In Experiment 2 (n = 56), an intervening event requiring an additional, task-unrelated response was inserted between displays, which further attenuated the binding effect. Across both experiments, robust target location-response binding effects emerged, whereas distractor-based binding effects reported previously were not replicated. These findings indicate that both temporal delay and intervening events influence the memory traces underlying trial-history effects, supporting the view that visual search and action control rely on at least partially shared cognitive mechanisms.