When responding to two events in a sequence, the repetition or change of stimuli and the accompanying response can benefit or interfere with response execution: Full repetition leads to benefits in performance while partial repetition leads to costs. Additionally, even distractor stimuli can be integrated with a response, and can, upon repetition, lead to benefits or interference. Recently it has been suggested that not only identical, but also perceptually similar distractors retrieve a previous response (Singh et al., Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78(8), 2307-2312, 2016): Participants discriminated four visual shapes appearing in five different shades of grey, the latter being irrelevant for task execution. Exact distractor repetitions yielded the strongest distractor-based retrieval effect, which decreased with increasing dissimilarity between shades of grey. In the current study, we expand these findings by conceptually replicating Singh et al. (2016) using multimodal stimuli. In Experiment 1 (N=31), participants discriminated four visual targets accompanied by five auditory distractors. In Experiment 2 (N=32), participants discriminated four auditory targets accompanied by five visual distractors. We replicated the generalization of distractor-based retrieval – that is, the distractor-based retrieval effect decreased with increasing distractor-dissimilarity. These results not only show that generalization in distractor-based retrieval occurs in multimodal feature processing, but also that these processes can occur for distractors perceived in a different modality to that of the target.

当响应序列中的两个事件时，刺激的重复或变化以及伴随的响应可以有益于或干扰响应的执行：完全重复会带来性能上的好处，而部分重复会导致成本。此外，即使是干扰性刺激也可以与反应结合起来，并且在重复时可以带来好处或干扰。最近有人提出，不仅相同，而且感知上相似的干扰物也会检索到先前的反应（Singh 等人，Attention, Perception, & Psychophysicals, 78 (8), 2307-2312, 2016）：参与者区分了出现的四种视觉形状有五种不同的灰色阴影，后者与任务执行无关。精确的干扰项重复产生了最强的基于干扰项的检索效果，该效果随着灰色阴影之间差异的增加而减弱。在当前的研究中，我们通过概念性地复制 Singh 等人来扩展这些发现。（2016）使用多模式刺激。在实验 1（N=31）中，参与者辨别了四个视觉目标以及五个听觉干扰物。在实验 2 (N=32) 中，参与者辨别了四个听觉目标以及五个视觉干扰物。我们复制了基于干扰项的检索的概括——即，基于干扰项的检索效果随着干扰项相异性的增加而降低。这些结果不仅表明基于干扰项的检索的泛化发生在多模态特征处理中，而且这些过程也可能发生在以与目标模态不同的方式感知的干扰项中。