When humans carry out actions in response to some external stimulation, they acquire associations between the stimulus and the action it triggered. These stimulus-response associations are the basis for the automatic aspects of human performance: The tighter the link between stimulus and response, the faster the motor action is carried out upon stimulus presentation (cf. Logan, 1988). However, the particular flexibility of human behavior roots in humans? ability to act in a way that is not completely stimulus-driven. Stimuli often afford more than only one action and humans are able to select among these actions according to the context and their intentions. That is, humans "complement" stimulus information with some top-down control mechanism that takes care that stimulus-driven schemas activated at the same time are "channeled" in accordance with the agent?s intentions (e.g., Norman & Shallice, 1986). The importance of top-down control mechanisms guiding bottom-up schemas becomes especially obvious when they malfunction: "Utilisation behavior" is characterized by inability to inhibit actions from being triggered by the mere sight of an object with which the action is habitually associated (Lhermitte, 1983). Still, automatic and executive processes are traditionally explored with different experimental techniques. Top-down processes have been investigated with a number of paradigms studying processes like resource allocation, module configuration, step sequencing, outcome monitoring, troubleshooting, and so forth (see Monsell, 1996). In contrast, bottom-up influences on performance have been explored typically with priming techniques, which focus on effects driven by stimuli and their associations and/or by immediately preceding processing states. The current project abolishes this separation between controlled and automatic aspects of behavior. It does not only explore the properties of S-R associations but investigates also the conditions in which involuntary retrieval, based on prior S-R episodes, is liable to have significant effects on performance. It will do so by using an integrative approach that applies techniques coming from several disciplines: experimental psychology (reaction times), neurophysiology (event-related potentials [ERPs], induced gamma-band responses [iGBR], transcranial magnetic stimulation [TMS]), and neuropsychology (lesion studies).