A journey inside partial repetition costs and the RR effect: Does a repeating response retrieve the n-1 task in task switching?

In task switching, response repetitions (RR) usually yield performance benefits compared to response switches, but only when the task repeats. When the task switches, RR benefits vanish or even turn into costs, yielding an interaction between repeating versus switching the task and the response. Several theoretical accounts were proposed to explain this interaction. In this study, we test a prediction derived from binding and retrieval accounts which assumes that task and response are bound in each trial N. Moreover, when the task or the response repeats, it retrieves the task-response binding formed in the N−1 trial. In a previous study, we showed that repeating the task indeed retrieves the response. Namely, we found a higher probability of erroneously repeating the same response as in N-1 when the repeats than when it switches. This can explain why RR benefits are found in task repetitions. We now conduct the second of a series of experiments to examine whether repeating the response retrieves the previous task. To this aim, we will examine whether the probability of erroneously performing the n-1 task is higher in response repetitions than switches. This could explain why RR costs are found in task switches. Such an erroneous selection of the N-1 task in response repetitions might reflect retrieval of the previous episode and thus bring further support to the episodic retrieval account for the RR effect in task switching.