The congruency sequence effect in a modified prime-probe task indexes response-general control.

Abstract

Adapting flexibly to recent events is essential in everyday life. A robust measure of such adaptive behavior is the congruency sequence effect (CSE) in the prime-probe task, which refers to a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. Prior findings indicate that the CSE in the prime-probe task reflects control processes that modulate response activation after the prime onsets but before the probe appears. They also suggest that similar control processes operate even in a modified prime-probe task wherein the initial prime is a relevant target, rather than merely a distractor. Because adaptive behavior frequently occurs in the absence of irrelevant stimuli, the present study investigates the nature of the control processes that operate in this modified prime-probe task. Specifically, it investigates whether these control processes modulate only the response cued by the prime (response-specific control) or also other responses (response-general control). To make this distinction, we employed a novel variant of the modified prime-probe task wherein primes and probes are mapped to different responses (i.e., effectors), such that only response-general control processes can engender a CSE. Critically, we observed a robust CSE in each of 2 experiments. This outcome supports the response-general control hypothesis. More broadly, it suggests that the control processes underlying the CSE overlap with general mechanisms for adapting to sequential dependencies in the environment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).