Sihan He¹ (), Jay Pratt¹; ¹University of Toronto

As humans, we frequently evaluate the affective value (positive/negative) of things we see daily. Although such affective features are psychological rather than physical features of objects, abundant research has demonstrated their critical roles in visual processing (e.g., enhanced perception, biased attention, more durable memory) and action choices (e.g., approach/avoidance). Intriguingly, our brain integrates visual stimuli and corresponding responses into an episodic representation, an "event file," that can be stored and retrieved holistically. Thus, an important question is: Whether affective features, which can be relevant to both visual stimuli and actions, are bound to this event file and, if so, to which components they are bound (stimuli, action, or both)? To investigate this question, we used evaluative conditioning, validated with a priming task, to associate valences to simple visual geometric shapes with different colors. These affective stimuli were then used in a partial repetition task in which participants responded to two affective stimuli sequentially, with responses and stimuli features (color, valence) either repeated or switched. Reaction time differences between the partial repetition conditions where only one component was switched or repeated and the baseline condition where all components were repeated (the partial repetition cost) was the test of integration of that feature into the event file. Our findings revealed a significant cost when only valence or response was repeated. Surprisingly, no cost was found when both valence and response were repeated, indicating no cost from a switch of color. These findings suggest that the affective features of stimuli can be integrated into event files and might be bound to responses rather than stimuli. This study provides new insights into the integration of affective features with perceptual features and actions.