Effects of conflict trial proportion: A comparison of the Eriksen and Simon tasks

Rolf Ulrich,Karin M Bausenhart,Jeff Miller

doi:10.3758/s13414-020-02164-2

Rolf Ulrich, Karin M Bausenhart + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-020-02164-2

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Abstract

Two experiments examined global and local behavioral adaptation effects within and across the Eriksen task, where conflict is based on stimulus letter identities, and the Simon task, where conflict is based on stimulus and response locations. Trials of the two tasks were randomly intermixed, and the list-wide proportion of congruent trials was varied in both tasks (Experiment 1) or in just one task (Experiment 2). The global adaptation effect of list-wide congruency proportion (LWPC effect) was at least as large in the Simon task as in the Eriksen task. Likewise, the local adaptation effect of previous-trial congruency (Gratton effect) was at least as large in the Simon task as in the Eriksen task. In contrast to prior studies investigating transfer across Stroop and Simon tasks, there was no dissociation between global and local adaptation effects regarding their transfer across the different conflict tasks. In fact, both local and global adaptation effects appeared largely task-specific, because there was no or only little transfer of either Gratton effects or LWPC effects from the Eriksen to the Simon task or vice versa. On the whole, the results suggest that behavioral adaptation observed in the present design does not carry over from one of these tasks to the other, suggesting no involvement of a higher-order, task-general mechanism of cognitive control.

Highlights

The concept of selective attention implies that people are capable of monitoring a certain source of information while suppressing irrelevant information that impinges on the perceptual system at the same time
In order to investigate the effects of congruency proportion (i.e., list-wide proportion congruency (LWPC) effects) on the congruency effects in the Eriksen and Simon tasks, congruency effects were calculated for each participant and combination of current task and congruency proportion
To investigate sequential modulations of the congruency effect within and across tasks, data were collapsed across congruency proportions, and split according to task and congruency in the current and the immediately preceding trial

Summary

Introduction

The concept of selective attention implies that people are capable of monitoring a certain source of information while suppressing irrelevant information that impinges on the perceptual system at the same time. Research on selective attention has demonstrated, that irrelevant information usually cannot be completely suppressed, but may interfere with the processing of relevant information (Pashler, 1998). This fact is especially evident in conflict tasks, in which participants are asked to process task-relevant information in the presence of potentially conflicting taskirrelevant information. Participants are asked to make a speeded choice to the target letter while ignoring the flanker letters. Responses are usually faster and more accurate when the target and flanker letters afford the same response (congruent condition) than when they afford different responses (incongruent condition).

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