Registered Replication Report of Weissman, D. H., Jiang, J., & Egner, T. (2014). Determinants of congruency sequence effects without learning and memory confounds

Abstract

The congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to the finding that the effect of cognitive conflict is smaller following conflicting, incongruent trials than after non-conflicting, congruent trials in conflict tasks, such as the Stroop, Simon, and flanker tasks. This is typically interpreted as an upregulation of cognitive control in response to conflict. Weissman, Jiang, & Egner (2014) investigated whether the CSE appears in these three tasks and a further variant where task-irrelevant distractors precede the target (prime-probe task), in the absence of learning and memory confounds in samples collected online. They found significant CSEs only in the prime-probe and Simon tasks, suggesting that the effect is more robust in tasks where the distractor can be translated into a response faster than the target. In this Registered Replication Report we collected data online from samples approx. 2.5 times larger than in the original study for each of the four tasks to investigate whether the task-related differences in the magnitude of the CSE are replicable (Nmin = 115, Nmax = 130). Our findings extend but do not contradict the original results: Bayesian analyses suggested that the CSE was present in all four tasks in RT but only in the Simon task in accuracy. The size of the effect did not differ between tasks, and the size of the congruency effect was not correlated with the size of the CSE across participants. These findings suggest it might be premature to conclude that the difference in the speed of distractor- vs target-related response activation is a determinant of the size of cross-trial modulations of control. The practical implications of our results for online data collection in cognitive control research are also discussed.

Cognitive control in cross-modal contexts: Abstract feature transitions of task-related but not task-unrelated stimuli modulate the congruency sequence effect.

“…In this case, the CSE can be seen as a marker of control adjustments (i.e., adaptations of target-to-distractor processing). In line with control accounts, a CSE was consistently observed in confound-minimized prime-probe tasks (Gyurkovics et al, 2020; Schmidt & Weissman, 2014; Weissman et al, 2015, 2014).…”

Cognitive control adjustments are dependent on the level of conflict

“…screen resolution, refresh rate, participants’ head eyes distance from the screen) were not controlled for in this study. This deviation from the original study however should not matter much, as several studies have shown that congruency effects and sequential congruency effects are easily reproducible in online settings 16 , 17 , especially with the flanker task. All minor deviations in the methods are indicated at the corresponding part of the procedure.…”

“…Prior distributions are described in the “ Results ” section for every model tested. As a general rule, we used the raw mean congruency effect found in the original paper as the SD of our prior distribution in congruency effect tests, the half of the congruency effect in sequential congruency effects 17 . We also reported the Bayesian Robustness Regions ( RR ) notated as RR[ SD smallest, SD largest] that covers all priors that result in the same conclusion (B > 3, or B < 1/3 ) as the original prior SD 22 .…”