The instruction-based congruency effect predicts task execution efficiency: Evidence from inter- and intra-individual differences

Abstract

In contrast to traditional conflict paradigms, which measure interference from (over)trained associations, recent paradigms have been introduced that investigate automatic interference from newly instructed, but never executed, associations. In these prospective-instruction paradigms, participants receive new task instructions (e.g., if cat press left, if dog press right), but before they have to apply the instructions, they are first presented with another task that measures the automatic interference from the instructed task information. The resulting instruction-based congruency (IBC) effect is assumed to reflect the strength with which instructions are encoded and maintained in view of their future application. If this assumption holds true, the IBC effect should be inversely related to the speed with which the task instructions are eventually executed. To test this hypothesis, we administered a prospective-instruction paradigm to a large sample of 184 participants and observed a negative correlation between the IBC effect and mean reaction time on the instructed task. Similarly, an analysis looking at within-subject variations in the IBC effect and instructed task reaction times showed the same negative relation. Finally, we also present additional analyses suggesting this effect is independent from standard (experience-based) interference effects, and report explorative analyses that tested possible correlations with personality trait questionaires. Together, these findings confirm a key assumption of the IBC effect in prospective-instruction paradigms, and further support the use of this paradigm in instruction research.

Automatic effects of instructions: a tale of two paradigms

“…In addition, and in line with previous NEXT results (Pereg & Meiran, 2019 ) that indicate lack of influence of WM load on AEI size, we hypothesized that the choice complexity (and resultant WM load) in the Interference task would not influence AEI size. As for the previous hypothesis, some results from the I-D paradigm [i.e., the individual differences correlation reported by Braem et al, ( 2019 )] suggest an opposite prediction.…”

“…These results further argue against the possible influence of WM load on AEI size. We note that this last result has been challenged in a recent study by Braem et al ( 2019 ) that employed the I-D paradigm and showed a negative correlation between AEI size and task execution efficiency. Obviously, one major difference between Meiran et al ( 2016 ) and Braem et al ( 2019 ) is the paradigm, making it difficult to judge whether the conclusion is general or paradigm specific.…”

“…Unlike in NEXT, where reaction times (RTs) are raw, in early I-D papers, the analysis employed log-transformed RTs as commonly done (see Ratcliff, 1993 ) partly in order to make the RT-distribution nearly symmetric and thus make the variance independent of the mean (Ratcliff & Murdock, 1976 ). However, more recent I-D papers do not use this method anymore (for example, see Braem et al, 2019 and Tibboel et al, 2016 ), and yet, AEI size in those papers remains the same ballpark as in the previous reports. Therefore, it is unlikely that log transformation is the reason for the AEI size differences between the two paradigms.…”

“…In the first study, we examined the influence of the analytic approach on the different AEI size between the NEXT and the I-D paradigms. To do so, the current study used two existing data-sets from Meiran et al ( 2016 ) and Braem et al ( 2019 ). The data-sets were used to exploratorily examine the influence of most of the factors mentioned in the Introduction.…”

Learning when to learn: Context-specific instruction encoding

“…Because of this, performance is slowed down in the diagnostic task. This observation was coined the instruction-based congruency effect (for reviews, see Meiran, Liefooghe, & De Houwer, 2017), and it offers an index of the strength or intensity with which new instructions have been encoded into a task-set (e.g., Braem et al, 2019b;Whitehead & Egner, 2018). For example, the instruction-based congruency effect has been found to increase whenever the likelihood increases that one will also have to execute the inducer task (Whitehead & Egner, 2018), and it is positively related to the efficiency with which the inducer task is performed (both within and between subjects, Braem et al, 2019b).…”