Action planning and the temporal binding of response codes

The authors hypothesized that action planning leads to the temporal binding of response codes, which then are less available for the planning of other actions. Four experiments showed evidence for this code occupation hypothe sis. In Experiment 1, participants prepared a left or right finger movement (A), performed another left-right choice reaction (B), and then executed A ction A. In case of a partial feature overlap between A and B, reaction tim e for B increased. The same was true in Experiment 2, in which B was perfor med with the left or right foot. Experiment 3 showed that response-feature binding occurred only when there was sufficient time to form a plan. When A was precued but not intentionally prepared, feature overlap produced a dec rease in reaction time. Experiment 4 revealed that A benefited from feature overlap with B at short delays but not at longer delays between B and A. T his finding was presumably due to leftover activation in feature codes afte r plan execution, whereas overlap costs in B were unaffected by delay.