Goal-directed behaviour requires both efficient task execution as well as adequate task choice. Task choice can be influenced by both top-down and bottom-up factors, as shown in studies using the voluntary task-switching (VTS) paradigms. In the present study, we examined the binding of task with the context in VTS. Based on a binding and retrieval framework (Frings et al., 2020, Trends in Cognitive Sciences), we hypothesised that the context—albeit task irrelevant—could become bound with the task in a trial and retrieve it in the next trial when the context repeated. Therefore, we predicted that context repetitions would increase task-repetition rates and task-repetition benefits. We used an adaptive VTS procedure (Mittelstädt, V., Miller, J., & Kiesel, A., 2018, Memory & Cognition), wherein the stimulus affording a task repetition appears after the stimulus affording a task switch. The delay between the stimuli increases for every consecutive task repetition. We included a task-irrelevant context (a coloured box in Exp. 1 and 2, or a picture in Exp. 3) that could switch or repeat unpredictably in each trial. Contrary to the predictions, we found no evidence that repeating a task-irrelevant context affected either task choice or performance in three VTS experiments, even when context saliency was enhanced in Experiment 3. We discuss these findings in light of the interplay of performance optimization and task-set availability in VTS.

Project Folder containing experimental raw and preprocessed data, analyses scripts and some images used as stimuli. The main folder contains analyses and plots R scripts. The "data/ready/" folder contains preprocessed data (e.g., VTS_Pro.csv) and cleaned data identified by the _de suffix (e.g., VTS_Pro_de.csv). The "data/raw/" contains .zip files with the raw data as downloaded by Gorilla Experiment Builder. "Exp3_Context_Pics/" contains the context pictures of Experiment 3.