Free-choice and forced-choice actions: Shared representations and conservation of cognitive effort

• Published in: Attention, perception & psychophysics Vol. 82; no. 5; pp. 2516 - 2530
• Main Authors: Richardson, Benjamin, Pfister, Roland, Fournier, Lisa R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.07.2020
• Subjects: Behavioral Science and Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Psychology; Partial-repetition costs; Feature binding; Cognitive effort; Action overlap; Free choice; Action planning
• ISSN: 1943-3921; 1943-393X
• DOI: 10.3758/s13414-020-01986-4

We examined two questions regarding the interplay of planned and ongoing actions. First: Do endogenous (free-choice) and exogenous (forced-choice) triggers of action plans activate similar cognitive representations? And, second: Are free-choice decisions biased by future action goals retained in working memory? Participants planned and retained a forced-choice action to one visual event (A) while executing an immediate forced-choice or free-choice action (action B) to a second visual event (B); then the retained action (A) was executed. We found performance costs for action B if the two action plans partly overlapped versus did not overlap (partial repetition costs). This held true even when action B required a free-choice response indicating that forced-choice and free-choice actions are represented similarly. Partial repetition costs for free-choice actions were evident regardless of whether participants did or did not show free-choice response biases. Also, a subset of participants showed a bias to freely choose actions that did not overlap (vs. did overlap) with the action plan retained in memory, which led to improved performance in executing action B and recalling action A. Because cognitive effort is likely required to resolve feature code competition and confusion assumed to underlie partial repetition costs, this free-choice decision bias may serve to conserve cognitive effort and preserve the future action goal retained in working memory.