Time-out for conflict monitoring theory: Preventing rhythmic biases eliminates the list-level proportion congruent effect.

Abstract

The proportion congruent (PC) effect is the observation that congruency effects are smaller when most trials are incongruent rather than congruent. The list-level PC (LLPC) effect is the finding that a PC effect can transfer from biased inducer items to unbiased diagnostic items.Such effects are generally interpreted as resulting from conflict monitoring and attentional adaptation. An alternative view proposes that PC effects result from simple learning biases unrelated to conflict. The temporal learning account proposes that LLPC effects stem from a different task rhythm in the mostly congruent and mostly incongruent conditions. Two primeprobe experiments provide a critical test of this notion. In both, half of the participants were forced to withhold responding for a short period of time on inducer trials. This equates the task rhythm in the mostly congruent and mostly incongruent lists, while still maintaining differing levels of conflict. Consistent with the temporal learning account, but inconsistent with the conflict monitoring account, the LLPC effect was eliminated when rhythms were equated.

List-level control in the flanker task

“…Interestingly, however, some findings suggest that the AATC account may not apply to all paradigms: In one prior experiment, list-level control was observed on diagnostic items in a Simon task even when participants could predict responses on inducer items, which comprised only two items thereby enabling participants to utilise stimulus–response learning (Wühr et al, 2015). The same finding was observed in another experiment using a similar design in a prime-probe task (Schmidt, 2016). It is uncertain what could create such a discrepancy with the Stroop task, but these results suggest that preventing use of stimulus–response associations to guide responding on incongruent trials (by using an inducer set of four rather than two items) may not be strictly necessary to allow for list-level control in some tasks.…”

“…Consistent with our predictions based on the AATC account and with prior findings in the Stroop task (Bugg, 2014a), we did not observe an LWPC effect for diagnostic items and the Bayesian analysis suggested moderate evidence in favour of the null. These findings confirm that it is important to consider the potential for stimulus–response learning when evaluating evidence for list-level control in the flanker task (contrary to other paradigms such as the Simon and prime-probe tasks, where such a consideration might be less critical; Schmidt, 2016; Wühr et al, 2015). When the situation encourages associative learning as in the current experiment, list-level control may not be observed even though it is a viable mechanism that participants otherwise use to facilitate performance in the flanker task (Experiment 1).…”

“…The present findings are consistent with this view and reinforce that at least in some tasks, inclusion of inducer items that permit participants to use stimulus–response associations may preclude use and observation of list-level control. An interesting question for future research that emerges based on these findings is why this is the case for the Stroop (Bugg, 2014a) and flanker tasks (Experiments 1 and 2) but it may not be the case for the Simon task (Wühr et al, 2015) or the prime-probe task (Schmidt, 2016). That is, why would the AATC account be applicable to only a subset of conflict tasks?…”

Evidence against conflict monitoring and adaptation: An updated review

“…Yet further evidence in favour of a temporal learning interpretation of the LLPC effect comes from Schmidt (2017). Unlike prior evidence in support of the temporal learning view, a dissociation approach was adopted that allowed a direct contrast of the learning and control views.…”

“…Given that so much of what is observed in the attentional control literature directly follows from these principles alone, conflict monitoring theory therefore bears the burden of proof for demonstrating extra explanatory power. Second, while a lot of data exists that could be interpreted in multiple possible ways (i.e., due to the presence of uncontrolled confounds), the cleanest dissociation procedures have predominantly pointed toward either true null effects (Hazeltine & Mordkoff, 2014;Schmidt, 2013aSchmidt, , 2016bSchmidt, , 2017Schmidt & De Houwer, 2011;Schmidt & Lemercier, 2018) or at least findings that directly contradict attentional control logic (e.g., the negative congruency effects following incongruent trials in Weissman, Egner, et al, 2015).…”