Knock, knock – who’s there? Doorway event boundaries weaken but do not eliminate bindings in first-person perspective environments

Current theories of action control assume that the binding and retrieval of features into and from common memory representations (i.e., event files) constitute core mechanisms supporting goal-directed behavior. Recent work found that individual responses within ongoing action sequences can be bound as higher-order representations that persist long enough to influence hierarchical event perception and action control (e.g., Moeller & Frings, 2021; Weissman, 2025). Initial evidence suggests that these binding processes may be disrupted when event boundaries are encountered, yet it remains unclear whether boundaries invariably interfere with binding to the extent that the influence of previous actions on current ones (i.e., binding effects) is no longer measurable. To address this issue, we investigated response-response bindings in a first-person virtual scenario involving perceptually similar events that were separated by a spatial boundary (a doorway between rooms). Responses executed within a single event produced stronger binding effects than responses that spanned the event boundary, indicating that boundary perception can attenuate, but does not fully abolish, binding processes. These results suggest that the cognitive system organizes continuous perceptual streams into discrete events in a manner that modulates ongoing action control. Crucially, by demonstrating that binding processes adapt to, rather than fail at, naturalistic event transitions, the present results highlight a key mechanism that supports reliable yet flexible action control in everyday behavior.