Contextual influences on the sequential congruency effect

Abstract

The sequential congruency effect (SCE) refers to the reduction in the size of the congruency effect following incongruent, relative to congruent, trials. Prior evidence indicated that the SCE does not generalize across tasks or different conflict-producing feature dimensions. We present results from a Stroop task showing that when the local list context is such that all colors and words appear in the same proportion of congruent trials, the SCE is present, but when those same items vary in the proportions congruent, the SCE is absent. We suggest that if stimuli are sufficiently consistent in the informativeness of their dimensions for the responses, individuals will attempt to track such information and weight the dimensions accordingly. In this way, the SCE reflects sequential adjustments to the weights given to individual stimulus dimensions in an attempt to track this information.

Limits on the generalizability of context-driven control

“…The inclusion of variability in the informativeness of the word dimension (how often the word dimension carries the correct response) at each location through the presence of transfer stimuli (see Figure 2) makes the location dimension less useful for organizing consistent properties of stimuli. In contrast, consistency in the informativeness of the word dimension allows participants to accurately bias processing in order to allow more or less word information into the system (Hutcheon & Spieler, 2014;Logan & Zbrodoff, 1979;Melara & Algom, 2003). When this informativeness is consistent within a location, participants generalize within location (training blocks in Experiment 3), and when this informativeness is not consistent within location, we see no evidence for generalization within location (Experiments 1 and 2).…”

Working memory load dissociates contingency learning and item-specific proportion-congruent effects.

“…ifestation of a reactive control process of adaptation to itemspecific conflict frequency rather resulting completely from a contingency-learning process. Importantly, since the beginning of the debate on conflict adaptation spurred by the contingency-learning account (Schmidt & Besner, 2008), we are among the first to argue for a role of adaptive control processes in the original, two-item set itemspecific proportion-congruent manipulation (Jacoby et al, 2003; for other evidence in support of this position, see Hutcheon & Spieler, 2014;Shedden et al, 2013). We are also aware that this position faces the difficulty of reconciling the present results favoring a conflict-adaptation explanation with previous studies supporting a contingency-learning explanation (Hazeltine & Mordkoff, 2014;Schmidt, 2013a).…”

“…A control-based process would be used only in specific circumstances, for example, when contingency learning is discouraged by including words being associated with no specific response in the task (e.g., in a four-item set design in which mostly-incongruent words appear equally frequently in each of four colors, one congruent and three incongruent), or when the relevant dimension (i.e., the color), rather than the irrelevant dimension (i.e., the word), acts as the potent signal for conflict frequency (Bugg, 2015;Bugg & Hutchison, 2013). Notably, the situation examined by Jacoby et al (2003) would not be one of those circumstances (although see Hutcheon & Spieler, 2014, for evidence in support of a conflict-adaptation explanation of the item-specific proportioncongruent effect in Jacoby et al's 2003 two-item set design).…”

Contingencies and attentional capture: the importance of matching stimulus informativeness in the item-specific proportion congruent task

“…The notion that contingent stimuli attract attention only stands to reason: predictive stimuli in our environment are attended because they can help guide our behavior (see also, Hutcheon and Spieler, 2014). Thus, the suggestion here is that a correlated mostly congruent distracting word will attract more attention than an uncorrelated mostly incongruent one in experiments such as those of Bugg and Hutchison (2013).…”