The sound of silence: Binding and retrieval of silence in distractor-response binding
Maria Nemeth, Christian Frings, Philip Schmalbrock, Birte Moeller · 2026
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Description
Maria Nemeth, Christian Frings, Philip Schmalbrock, and Birte Moeller report a 2026 study of whether silence can bind to an action like a sound can. When people act, the mind files the act with its setting, and a later match can call the act back. Past work showed sounds file in that way as side inputs.
Across tests with 120 people in all, a silent gap as the side input gave the same binding effect as two real sounds. The size of the effect did not differ between silence and sound. The result backs the view that silence is heard as a thing, not just a lack.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Maria Nemeth, Christian Frings, Philip Schmalbrock, Birte Moeller |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 44 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |