We examined two questions regarding the interplay of planned and ongoing actions. First: Do endogenous (free-choice) and exogenous (forced-choice) triggers of action plans activate similar cognitive representations? And, second: Are free-choice decisions biased by future action goals retained in working memory? Participants planned and retained a forced-choice action to one visual event (A) while executing an immediate forced-choice or free-choice action (action B) to a second visual event (B); then the retained action (A) was executed. We found performance costs for action B if the two action plans partly overlapped versus did not overlap (partial repetition costs). This held true even when action B required a free-choice response indicating that forced-choice and free-choice actions are represented similarly. Partial repetition costs for free-choice actions were evident regardless of whether participants did or did not show free-choice response biases. Also, a subset of participants showed a bias to freely choose actions that did not overlap (vs. did overlap) with the action plan retained in memory, which led to improved performance in executing action B and recalling action A. Because cognitive effort is likely required to resolve feature code competition and confusion assumed to underlie partial repetition costs, this free-choice decision bias may serve to conserve cognitive effort and preserve the future action goal retained in working memory.

中文翻译：

---

自由选择和强迫选择行动：共同的表示和认知努力的保存。

我们研究了有关计划和正在进行的行动之间相互作用的两个问题。第一：行动计划的内源性（自由选择）和外源性（强迫选择）触发因素会激活类似的认知表征吗？其次，第二点：自由选择的决策是否会因工作记忆中保留的未来行动目标而有偏差？参与者计划并保留对一个视觉事件（A）的强制选择行动，同时对第二个视觉事件（B）执行立即的强制选择或自由选择行动（动作B）；然后执行保留的动作（A）。如果两个行动计划部分重叠或不重叠，我们发现了行动B的绩效成本（部分重复成本）。即使动作B需要自由选择的响应，这表明强制选择动作和自由选择动作也可以类似地表示，这仍然成立。自由选择行动的部分重复成本是显而易见的，无论参与者是否表现出自由选择反应的偏见。此外，一部分参与者表现出偏向于自由选择不会与保留在内存中的行动计划发生重叠（相对于重叠），从而提高了执行行动B和召回行动A的性能。由于解决特征代码竞争可能需要认知努力，而混淆是假定部分重复成本的基础，这种自由选择的决策偏见可能有助于节省认知努力，并保留工作记忆中保留的未来行动目标。