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 hypothesis. In Experiment 1, participants prepared a left or right finger movement (A), performed another left-right choice reaction (B), and then executed Action A. In case of a partial feature overlap between A and B, reaction time for B increased. The same was true in Experiment 2, in which B was performed 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 decrease 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. This finding was presumably due to leftover activation in feature codes after plan execution, whereas overlap costs in B were unaffected by delay.