Knock, knock - who's there? Doorway event boundaries weaken but do not eliminate bindings in first-person perspective environments.
- 1Department of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, University of Trier, D-54286, Trier, Germany. [email protected].
- 2Department of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, University of Trier, D-54286, Trier, Germany.
- 3Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Cognitive Neurophysiology, University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Abstract
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.
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BibTeX
@article{nemeth2026knock,
title = {{Knock, knock - who's there? Doorway event boundaries weaken but do not eliminate bindings in first-person perspective environments.}},
author = {Maria Nemeth and Christian Frings and Christian Beste and Birte Moeller},
journal = {Psychonomic bulletin \& review},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.3758/s13423-026-03036-w},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42972197},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Knock, knock - who's there? Doorway event boundaries weaken but do not eliminate bindings in first-person perspective environments.
AU - Maria Nemeth
AU - Christian Frings
AU - Christian Beste
AU - Birte Moeller
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
JO - Psychonomic bulletin & review
DO - 10.3758/s13423-026-03036-w
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42972197
AB - 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.
SN - 1069-9384
SN - 1531-5320
ER -