Distractors and responses are integrated in an event file when they occur together. Further, when all or some features repeat, the whole event file is retrieved, affecting later action as observed in so-called binding effects. Previous research used varying distractor pool sizes (ranging from just two to well over 30) to choose distractors from, but it is unclear whether distractor pool size has an effect on the size of distractor-based binding effects. The present study investigates, if and how distractor pool size modulates binding effects. Using an adapted prime-probe design, participants were assigned to large (384 distractors) or small (2 distractors) distractor pool sizes, and distractor-response binding effects were measured. Binding effects were stronger for the large distractor pool condition compared to the small pool condition. We discuss these findings against the background of the negative priming literature and research on novelty.

Dataset for: Philip Schmalbrock, Christian Frings & Birte Moeller (2022) Pooling it all together – the role of distractor pool size on stimulus-response binding, Journal of Cognitive Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2022.2026363