The Specificity and Reliability of Conflict Adaptation: A Mouse-Tracking Study

John G. Grundy

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.770509

Abstract

Researchers have recently begun to question the specificity and reliability of conflict adaptation effects, also known as sequential congruency effects (SCEs), a highly cited effect in cognitive psychology. Some have even used the lack of reliability across tasks (e.g., Flanker, and Stroop) to argue against models of cognitive control that have dominated the field for decades. The present study tested the possibility that domain-general processes across tasks might appear on more sensitive mouse-tracking metrics rather than overall reaction times. The relationship between SCE effects on the Stroop and Flanker tasks were examined for the first time using a mouse-tracking paradigm. Three main findings emerged: (1) Robust SCEs were observed for both the Stroop and Flanker tasks at the group level, (2) Within-task split-half reliabilities for the SCE across dependent variables were weak at best and non-existent in many cases, and (3) SCEs for the Flanker and Stroop tasks did not correlate with each other for overall reaction times, but did show significant correlations between tasks on more dynamic measures that captured processes before response execution. These findings contribute to the literature by highlighting how mouse-tracking may be a fruitful avenue by which future studies can examine the specificity and reliability of conflict adaptation and tease apart different theoretical models producing the effects.

Highlights

The way that we adjust behaviors to events in our day-to-day lives depends largely on a history with recent events
The present study examined the relationship between sequential congruency effects (SCEs) for the Stroop and the Flanker tasks using a mouse-tracking paradigm to assess the reliability and domain-generality or specificity of the effects
One cannot completely equate the effect sizes for the Simon task with the Stroop and Flanker task used in the present study, it should be noted that the present study has 2.5 times the number of required participants suggested by the power analysis

Summary

Introduction

The way that we adjust behaviors to events in our day-to-day lives depends largely on a history with recent events. For instance, be surprised by a firework going off on New Year’s Day after recently hearing several other fireworks exploding. Likely be shocked by a firework going off on a random Tuesday evening. Human beings adjust responses to these events —we might jump in response to the second scenario, but not the first. We observe history-based adjustments in the form of smaller congruency effects following recently encountered incongruent than congruent trials (Gratton et al, 1992) on conflict tasks such as Stroop (1935) and Flanker tasks (Eriksen and Eriksen, 1974; see Figure 1).

Methods

Results

Conclusion