Context-specific learning and control: The roles of awareness, task relevance, and relative salience

Crump, Matthew J. C.; Vaquero, Joaquín M. M.; Milliken, Bruce

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.01.004

Cited by 107 publications

(170 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…These results demonstrate that, unlike to what is the case for practiced S-R mappings (e.g., Cañadas et al, 2013;Crump et al, 2006Crump et al, , 2008Crump & Logan, 2010;Mayr & Bryck, 2005Reuss et al, 2014;Rubin & Koch, 2006;Schouppe et al, 2014), tasks cannot be triggered in a context-specific manner on the mere basis of instructions. Possibly, the integration between task sets and their context is something that requires practice and is not possible on the basis of mere instructions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

“…This is considered moderate evidence for the alternative hypothesis (Jeffreys, 1961), and merely anecdotal evidence in the error rates. However, note that this is an underestimation of the effect as this Bayesian test does not take into account the abundant previous evidence for the automatic location-specific activation of trained task sets (e.g., Crump et al, 2006Crump et al, , 2008Crump & Logan, 2010;King, Korb, & Egner, 2012;Mayr & Bryck, 2007). Still, we decided to test the effect of training on the automatic locationspecific activation of trained task sets once more in Experiment 4.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…sets is acquired through implicit learning mechanisms that require practice (Crump et al, 2008;Reuss et al, 2014). However, before drawing this conclusion we wanted to further probe the impact of instructed task contexts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When the location on the screen was predictive of the task, the congruency effect disappeared, suggesting that the location started indicating the applicability of the task rules. Interestingly, this context-dependent task performance is often hypothesized to be a product of implicit, habitual learning, which on its turn is thought to require practice (Crump et al, 2008;Reuss et al, 2014). Based on these studies, one might postulate that contextdependent task performance could not be achieved on the basis of mere instructions (without any prior task experience).…”

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confidence: 99%

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There are limits to the effects of task instructions: Making the automatic effects of task instructions context-specific takes practice.

Braem¹,

Liefooghe²,

Houwer³

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Unlike other animals, humans have the unique ability to share and use verbal instructions to prepare for upcoming tasks. Recent research showed that instructions are sufficient for the automatic, reflex-like activation of responses. However, systematic studies into the limits of these automatic effects of task instructions remain relatively scarce. In this study, the authors set out to investigate whether this instruction-based automatic activation of responses can be context-dependent. Specifically, participants performed a task of which the stimulus-response rules and context (location on the screen) could either coincide or not with those of an instructed to-be-performed task (whose instructions changed every run). In 2 experiments, the authors showed that the instructed task rules had an automatic impact on performance-performance was slowed down when the merely instructed task rules did not coincide, but, importantly, this effect was not context-dependent. Interestingly, a third and fourth experiment suggests that context dependency can actually be observed, but only when practicing the task in its appropriate context for over 60 trials or after a sufficient amount of practice on a fixed context (the context was the same for all instructed tasks). Together, these findings seem to suggest that instructions can establish stimulus-response representations that have a reflexive impact on behavior but are insensitive to the context in which the task is known to be valid. Instead, context-specific task representations seem to require practice.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 64%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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There are limits to the effects of task instructions: Making the automatic effects of task instructions context-specific takes practice.

Braem¹,

Liefooghe²,

Houwer³

et al. 2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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show abstract

“…For example, if one subset of stimuli within a block of trials is mostly congruent, and another subset is mostly incongruent, the size of the Stroop effect is larger for the mostly congruent items (Jacoby, Lindsay, & Hessels, 2003) even though the congruency level of the upcoming trial is unpredictable, and even after controlling for priming effects (e.g., Mayr, Awh, & Laurey, 2003;Schmidt & de Houwer, 2011). These context-specific proportion effects have been replicated using a number of contextual cues including location (Corballis & Gratton, 2003;Crump, Gong, & Milliken, 2006), form (e.g., font, Bugg, Jacoby, & Toth, 2008;words, Jacoby et al, 2003; shape under certain conditions, Crump, Vaquero, & Milliken, 2008), colour (Vietze & Wendt, 2009;but see, Jacoby et al, 2003), and even social categories such as gender (Cañadas, Rodríguez-Bailón, Milliken, & Lupiáñez, 2013).…”

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confidence: 94%

Trial-by-trial adjustments in control triggered by incidentally encoded semantic cues

Blais

Harris

Sinanian

et al. 2015

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Cognitive control mechanisms provide the flexibility to rapidly adapt to contextual demands. These contexts can be defined by top-down goals-but also by bottom-up perceptual factors, such as the location at which a visual stimulus appears. There are now several experiments reporting contextual control effects. Such experiments establish that contexts defined by low-level perceptual cues such as the location of a visual stimulus can lead to context-specific control, suggesting a relatively early focus for cognitive control. The current set of experiments involved a word-word interference task designed to assess whether a high-level cue, the semantic category to which a word belongs, can also facilitate contextual control. Indeed, participants exhibit a larger Flanker effect to items pertaining to a semantic category in which 75% of stimuli are incongruent than in response to items pertaining to a category in which 25% of stimuli are incongruent. Thus, both low-level and high-level stimulus features can affect the bottom-up engagement of cognitive control. The implications for current models of cognitive control are discussed.

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Context, Conflict, and Control

Bugg¹

2017

The Wiley Handbook of Cognitive Control

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Context-specific learning and control: The roles of awareness, task relevance, and relative salience

Cited by 107 publications

References 33 publications

There are limits to the effects of task instructions: Making the automatic effects of task instructions context-specific takes practice.

There are limits to the effects of task instructions: Making the automatic effects of task instructions context-specific takes practice.

Trial-by-trial adjustments in control triggered by incidentally encoded semantic cues

Context, Conflict, and Control

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