Proportion Congruency Research Articles

Learning-based before intentional cognitive control: Developmental evidence for a dissociation between implicit and explicit control.

Cognitive control can be triggered by explicit or implicit events; it has been proposed that these two possibilities tap into dissociable mechanisms. In this study, we investigate this idea by testing whether young children, who struggle with explicitly triggered control, can demonstrate proportion congruency effects-which are based on implicit learning of task regularities and thus indicative of implicitly triggered control. In a series of five experiments, preschoolers indeed demonstrated significant proportion congruency effects, including both list-wide proportion congruency (LWPC) and item-specific proportion congruency (ISPC) effects, in a Stroop-like task and in a flanker task. These effects did not increase with age, contrary to what is typically observed for explicit control. These results demonstrate that young children show early evidence of cognitive control-including proactive control-when it is triggered by implicit events, at an age where explicit control, and particularly proactive control, is not yet functional. By showing evidence of an early ability for fine-grained adjustments of cognitive control when control cues are learned implicitly, these results support the proposed functional dissociation between explicit and implicit cognitive control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Reinforcement learning of irrelevant stimulus-response associations modulates cognitive control.

It has been demonstrated that the Simon effect may be increased or reversed due to proportion congruency manipulation, suggesting that learned spatial irrelevant stimulus-response (S-R) associations are used to guide responses. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that learning spatial irrelevant S-R associations by rewards may show a similar modulatory effect on the Simon effect. In two experiments with the Simon task, we manipulated the contingency of stimulus-response-reward between groups. Experiment 1 showed that the Simon effect in both reaction times and error rates increased if potential performance-contingent rewards always followed congruent trials but decreased and was even reversed if rewards always followed incongruent trials. These suggest that participants used reward-strengthened spatially compatible and incompatible irrelevant S-R associations respectively to predict responses. Experiment 2 showed that the data pattern of the increase and reversal of the Simon effect showed in both rewarded and nonrewarded colors, suggesting that reward-strengthened spatial irrelevant S-R associations were used to guide responses even when there were no potential rewards. Together, these results resemble the proportion congruency effect with the Simon task, suggesting that there could be stronger conflict and attentional control when the correct response is different from the response activated by reward-strengthened irrelevant S-R associations. This suggests that reinforcement learning of irrelevant S-R associations can modulate cognitive control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Evaluating the learning of stimulus-control associations through incidental memory of reinforcement events.

Cognitive control describes the ability to use internal goals to strategically guide how we process and respond to our environment. Changes in the environment lead to adaptation in control strategies. This type of control learning can be observed in performance adjustments in response to varying proportions of easy to hard trials over blocks of trials on classic control tasks. Known as the list-wide proportion congruent (LWPC) effect, increased difficulty is met with enhanced attentional control. Recent research has shown that motivational manipulations may enhance the LWPC effect, but the underlying mechanisms are not yet understood. We manipulated Stroop proportion congruency over blocks of trials and, after each trial, provided participants with either performance-contingent feedback ("correct/incorrect") or noncontingent feedback ("response logged") above trial-unique, task-irrelevant images (reinforcement events). The LWPC task was followed by a surprise recognition memory task, which allowed us to test whether attention to feedback (incidental memory for the images) varies as a function of proportion congruency, time, performance contingency, and individual differences. We replicated a robust LWPC effect in a large sample (N = 402) but observed no differences in behavior between feedback groups. Importantly, the memory data revealed better encoding of feedback images from context-defining trials (e.g., congruent trials in a mostly congruent block), especially early in a new context and in congruent conditions. Individual differences in reward and punishment sensitivity were not strongly associated with control-learning effects. These results suggest that statistical learning of contextual demand may have a larger impact on control learning than individual differences in motivation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Controlled or automatic? Influence of congruency proportion and stimulus-onset asynchrony on the brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effects

Whether a cognitive process is operated automatically or in a controlled manner has been a long-standing question in cognitive psychology. However, this issue has not been investigated in the activation of metaphoric association. A primed word valence judgement task is often used to test the activation of metaphoric association, in which participants first see a prime (bright/dark square or fixation point moving up or down from the centre of the screen) and then make a valence judgement to a target word. Metaphoric congruency effect occurs when participants make faster judgements to the target with valence being matched with the prime (good followed bright/top prime) than being mismatched with the prime (good followed dark/bottom prime). In the present two experiments, we manipulated prime-target stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and proportion of metaphorically congruent trials (congruency proportion) to tease apart the effects of automatic and controlled activation of brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric associations on word valence judgements. Results showed an overall effect of congruency proportion on brightness-valence and spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect, which was independent of prime-target SOA. The effect was enhanced or reversed when congruency proportion was higher or lower than 0.5, respectively, suggesting that the activation of metaphoric association could be modulated by strategic control. The implications of these findings on the Conceptual Metaphor Theory and semantic priming theories are discussed.

The Item-Specific Proportion Congruency Effect is Contaminated by Short-Term Repetition Priming

The Item-Specific Proportion Congruency Effect is Contaminated by Short-Term Repetition Priming

The role of contingency and correlation in the Stroop task.

Facilitation (faster responses to Congruent trials compared with Neutral trials) in the Stroop task has been a difficult effect for models of cognitive control to explain. The current research investigated the role of word-response contingency, word-colour correlation, and proportion congruency in producing Stroop effects. Contingency and correlation refers to the probability of specific word-response and word-colour pairings that are implicitly learnt while performing the task. Pairs that have a higher probability of occurring are responded to faster, a finding that challenges top-down attention control accounts of Stroop task performance. However, studies that try to experimentally control for contingency and correlation typically do so by increasing the proportion of incongruent trials in the task, which cognitive control accounts posit affects interference control via the top-down biasing of attention. The present research focused on whether facilitation is also affected by contingency and correlation while additionally looking at the effect of proportion congruency. This was done in two experiments that compared the typical design of Stroop task experiments (i.e., having equal proportions of Congruent and Incongruent trials but also contingency and correlational biases) to: (a) a design that had unequal congruency proportions but no contingency or correlation bias (Experiment 1) and (b) a design where the correlation is biased but proportion congruency and contingency were not (Experiment 2). Results did not support the hypotheses that contingency or correlation affected facilitation. However, interference was almost halved in the alternative design of Experiment 2, demonstrating an effect of contingency learning in typical measures of Stroop interference.

Preschoolers are capable of fine-grained implicit cognitive control: Evidence from development of the context-specific proportion congruency effect

Whereas much of the developmental literature has focused on the difficulties of young children in regulating their behavior, an increasing base of evidence suggests that children may be capable of surprisingly flexible engagement of cognitive control when based on implicit experience with the situation. One of the most fine-grained examples of implicit cognitive control in adults is the context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) effect—the finding that interference in a conflict task is reduced for stimuli that are presented in a context (e.g., a spatial location) where stimuli are generally incongruent. Can such a subtle modulation of control be observed in children? In Experiment 1 (N = 180), we showed that this effect exists in preschoolers for two different types of context manipulation and that its magnitude is at least as large as in older children. In Experiment 2 (N = 40), we confirmed that the effect transfers to unbiased stimuli, indicating that it is not attributable to contingency learning of stimulus–response associations and can be taken to actually reflect cognitive control. These results support the possibility that implicit cognitive control (implemented without explicit intentions and without requiring subject awareness) can be functionally distinct from explicit control and that even very young children can implement fine-grained cognitive control when it is based on implicit cues.

Conflict-induced perceptual filtering: A mechanism supporting location-specific control?

Cognitive control can adapt to the level of conflict present in the environment in a proactive (pre-stimulus onset) or reactive (post-stimulus onset) manner. This is evidenced by list-wide and location-specific proportion congruence effects, reduced interference in higher conflict lists or locations, respectively. Proactive control in the flanker task is believed to be supported by a conflict-induced-filtering (CIF) mechanism. The goal of the present set of experiments was to test if CIF also supports reactive location-specific control in the flanker task. To measure CIF, we interspersed a visual search task with a flanker task. After reproducing evidence for CIF using a two-location, list-wide proportion congruence manipulation (Experiment 1), we examined if a similar pattern emerges using a location-specific proportion congruence manipulation in Experiments 2 - 5. We found minimal evidence that reactive location-specific control employs a CIF mechanism. What was clear, however, is that the location-specific proportion congruence effect is susceptible to disruption from an intermixed task that dilutes the location-conflict signal. This highlights the need for alternative approaches to elucidate whether CIF or another mechanism supports reactive, location-specific control.

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

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.

The unique effects of relatively recent conflict on cognitive control.

In tasks like Stroop, it is well documented that cognitive control is affected by experiences with past conflict on 2 timescales. The "immediate" timescale is evidenced by congruency sequence effects while the "long" timescale is evidenced by list-wide proportion congruence effects. What remains underspecified is whether relatively recent experiences with conflict (i.e. recent timescale of a few preceding trials) also uniquely affect control and how experiences on different timescales are weighted. We conducted 3 preregistered experiments using a novel Stroop paradigm designed to isolate the effects of the recent timescale and measured cognitive control via diagnostic items. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the level of conflict experienced in the recent timescale within mostly congruent and mostly incongruent lists. Controlling for conflict experiences in the long and immediate timescales, we found that conflict in the recent timescale affected cognitive control and did so similarly across list types. In Experiment 2 we found a boundary condition for the effects of recent conflict -when the recent timescale was preceded by 50% congruent trials, conflict in the recent timescale did not affect cognitive control. Experiment 3 systematically replicated the findings of Experiment 1 and demonstrated that conflict in the recent timescale affected cognitive control even after a long unfilled delay between recent conflict and subsequent diagnostic trials. These novel findings expand understanding of how conflict experiences in the recent timescale affect cognitive control and highlight the need to expand theories of cognitive control to incorporate the recent timescale and its interaction with other timescales. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognitive brakes in interference resolution: A mouse-tracking and EEG co-registration study

Cognitive control is particularly challenged when it is necessary to resolve interference and correct our behavior on-the-fly. To do this, it is necessary to inhibit the ongoing wrong action and reprogram a new motor plan as appropriate for the current task. This ability requires a complex interaction between cognitive and motor control. Here, we aimed at shedding light on this interplay. To do this, we administered a spatial version of the Stroop task comprising blocks with different Proportion Congruency (PC) manipulations (i.e., manipulating the percentage of congruent trials at 25%, 50% or 75%), to elicit different cognitive control demands. Moreover, we used two techniques with high-temporal resolution, as we simultaneously recorded EEG and mouse trajectories, that can be considered the real-time kinematic correlates of the ongoing cognitive processing. Specifically, we analyzed the Event Related Potentials (ERPs) locked to the peak deceleration time, which marks the suppression of ongoing erroneous trajectories, and we estimated their neural sources. We found three PC-dependent ERP components engaging distinct neural regions, which showed a reduction of the Stroop effect for low-PC blocks. By using a novel co-registration of mouse-trajectories and EEG, we suggest that the observed components may reflect different mechanisms engaged by reactive cognitive control to resolve the interference, including the suppression of an ongoing but no longer appropriate response, the selection of the new motor plan and its actual updating.

The influence of congruency proportion, target eccentricity, and valence strength on the spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect in a word valence judgment task.

In a word valence judgment task, positive words (e.g., excellence) are judged faster when presented at the top (congruent position) than at the bottom of the screen (incongruent position), whereas the opposite pattern occurs for negative words (e.g., disaster). This spatial-valence metaphoric congruency effect reflects top-positive/bottom-negative metaphoric association and may be attributed to at least three possible mechanisms: spreading activation between spatial and valence concepts (activation account), epistemic function that a conceptual metaphor serves to reduce the uncertainty associated with valence concepts (epistemic account), and/or the extent to which spatial-valence metaphoric association is relevant to task demand (relevance account). In three experiments, we manipulated congruency proportion, target eccentricity, and valence strength in a word valence judgment task to test these three possible accounts. Results showed that the metaphoric congruency effect was larger when a high (vs. equal) proportion of targets appears in congruent, relative to incongruent, position, and for targets with strong (vs. weak) valence. However, the effect in reaction time measure was not modulated by whether the target appeared in the position being near vs. far away from the center of the screen. The overall findings are better accommodated by the relevance account. The implications of the current findings on other theoretical accounts, such as Conceptual Metaphor Theory and polarity correspondence account, are also discussed.

What can be learned in a context-specific proportion congruence paradigm? Implications for reproducibility.

Crump and Milliken (2009) reported a context-specific proportion congruence (CSPC) effect for inducer and diagnostic sets, the strongest evidence to date of context-specific control. Attempts to replicate/reproduce this evidence have failed, including Experiment 1. Using a picture-word Stroop task, we tackled the question of how to interpret such failures by testing the consistency hypothesis (Hutcheon & Spieler, 2017) and two novel hypotheses inspired by our theorizing about learning opportunities in the CSPC paradigm. Experiment 2 found a CSPC effect when there was no diagnostic set, supporting the consistency hypothesis. Experiment 3 produced novel evidence for item-PC learning in a CSPC paradigm. In contrast, Experiment 4 did not produce strong evidence for location-item conjunctive learning. Our findings suggest failures to replicate/reproduce the CSPC effect do not necessarily indicate a Type I error or instability but instead may indicate episodic representations were organized based on item and not location. This item-PC learning hypothesis uniquely predicted Experiment 3 findings and accommodates findings of all but one prior attempt to replicate/reproduce the CSPC effect for inducer and diagnostic sets, including Experiment 1. Predicting whether future attempts are successful will require deeper understanding of the factors that promote learning of item-PC versus location-PC associations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Challenging voices: Mixed evidence for context-specific control adjustments in the auditory domain.

The flexible adjustment to changing demands is an astonishing human ability. One related phenomenon is the context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) effect. Regarding response conflict, the CSPC refers to reduced response interference in contexts with a high conflict proportion as opposed to contexts with a low conflict proportion. Derived from previous research showing CSPCs in the visual domain, we here aim to investigate whether human voices (male vs. female) as auditory contexts trigger control adjustments. To this end, we used a numerical judgement task with number words spoken by a male or female voice. We created response conflict by presenting the words either to the left or right ear (Experiment 1), and we created different levels of processing fluency by presenting them clearly or with background noise (Experiment 2). For a given participant, either the female or the male voice was associated with a high proportion of incongruent/disfluent trials and a low proportion of congruent/fluent trials, respectively. Extending previous findings from the visual modality, we found that the frequency of challenging information within one auditory context (i.e., the voice) can lead to typical CSPC patterns. In two further experiments, using frequency biased and unbiased items, we found evidence for the contribution of associative learning. Limitations of context control associations will be discussed.

Item-specific proportion congruency (ISPC) modulates, but does not generate, the backward crosstalk effect.

When both tasks in a psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm have compatible manual responses, a compatibility benefit in RT can often be observed on Task1 performance, in apparent violation of a strict traditional response selection bottleneck model. This compatibility-based backward crosstalk effect (BCE) has been generally attributed to automatic activation of Task2 response information, in parallel with attended Task1 performance. This paper tests a potential alternative mechanism of the BCE. Item-specific proportion congruency (ISPC) effects are previously well demonstrated, where learning of associations between stimuli and task conflict (e.g., that particular Stroop items are typically incongruent) allows rapidly and automatically elicited control adjustments in performance. Similar proportion manipulations have recently been shown to modulate the BCE in dual-task performance. If participants could similarly learn associations between particular pairs of stimuli and resulting response conflict in a PRP task, this kind of mechanism could produce relative speeding versus slowing of Task1 RT on response compatible versus incompatible trials. This pattern of data directly describes the BCE, and represents a potential alternative mechanism that does not require any response crosstalk, and would reinforce a stricter view of the response selection bottleneck model, if true. Over two experiments, we demonstrate that while the BCE is sensitive to ISPC-like effects based on Task1 conflict contingencies, the BCE is insensitive to relationships between particular pairs of stimuli and associated conflict. While ISPC effects can modulate the BCE, they do not generate the BCE. These findings reinforce the current Task2 parallel response activation account of the BCE.

No evidence for the reduction of task competition and attentional adjustment during task-switching practice

Performance in task switching experiments is worse when the current stimulus is associated with different responses in the two tasks (i.e., incongruent condition) than when it is associated with the same response (i.e., congruent condition). This congruency effect reflects some sort of application of the irrelevant task's stimulus-response translation rules. Manipulating the recency and the proportion of congruent and incongruent trials results in a modulation of the congruency effect (i.e., Congruency Sequence Effect, CSE, and Proportion Congruency Effect, PCE, respectively), suggesting attentional adjustment of processing weights. Here, we investigated the impact of task switching practice on the congruency effect and the modulation thereof by (a) re-analyzing the data of a task switching experiment involving six consecutive sessions and (b) conducting a novel four-session experiment in which the proportions of congruent and incongruent trials were manipulated. Although practice appeared to reduce the reaction times overall and the task switch costs (i.e., slower reaction times after task switches than after task repetitions) to an asymptotic level, the congruency effect as well as its modulations remained remarkably constant. These findings thus do not provide evidence that conflict effects between tasks and attentional adjustment are affected by task switching practice.

Assessing the temporal learning account of the list-wide proportion congruence effect.

In this article, we assess an alternative account of a key experimental pattern thought to index top-down control. The list-wide proportion congruence effect is the well-documented pattern whereby the congruency effect (i.e., Stroop effect) is attenuated in lists containing mostly incongruent trials relative to lists containing mostly congruent trials. This pattern has typically been interpreted as a signature of a top-down control mechanism that modulates attention to the word dimension based on the global probability of encountering conflict between the word and color. However, Schmidt (2013a, 2013b) has proposed an alternative account that stresses relative temporal differences in responding between mostly incongruent and mostly congruent lists rather than relative differences in the control of attention. To assess this temporal learning account, we evaluate the evidence reported by Schmidt (2013a) and report new analyses of three previously published data sets in which a list-wide proportion congruence effect was observed after controlling for other potential confounds. These analyses targeted three key topics: effects of reaction time (RT) transformations, statistical support for temporal learning, and measurement of temporal rhythm. The evidence for the temporal learning account was neither strong nor consistent, and there was a highly significant list-wide proportion congruence effect that survived multiple attempts to control for temporal learning. Accordingly, we conclude that the temporal learning account is not currently a robust alternative to the global control account in explaining list-wide proportion congruence effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Unexpected conflict signals loom larger in a positive context: Evidence from context specific control adjustments.

One prominent feature of adaptive cognition in humans is the ability to flexibly adjust to changing task demands. In this respect, context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) effects describe the phenomenon that participants learn to adapt to contexts of frequently occurring conflicts even when the upcoming context cannot be anticipated. Here, we aim to provide evidence that such CSPC effects strongly depend on the affective valence of the context. Participants had to categorize pictures as animals versus humans (Experiment 1), words as male versus female (Experiment 2), and food pictures as depicting cold or hot dishes/beverages (Experiment 3). Stimuli were laterally presented to the left or right, creating Simon-like response interference. Half of the stimuli were of positive valence, half of negative valence with valence always being task-irrelevant. Positive or negative stimuli were associated with a high proportion of incongruent trials and a low proportion of congruent trials, respectively. In all three experiments, a CSPC effect was only significant when the high proportion of incongruent trials was associated with positive stimuli but reduced or even absent when the high proportion of incongruent trials was associated with negative stimuli. The findings further speak to the idea that it is the aversive nature of conflict stimuli that functions as a trigger for control adaptation. And such an unexpected aversive conflict signal looms larger when presented in a positive context than in a negative context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Adjustment of cognitive control to the frequency of dual-task interference

ABSTRACTThis study explored whether the control mechanisms recruited for optimising performance are similar for dual-task and interference-task settings. We tested whether the frequency of appearance of a secondary task resulted in an adjustment of anticipatory and reflexive forms of attentional control, as has been observed with other interference tasks (e.g. stroop and flanker). The results of two experiments demonstrated a proportion congruency effect (PCE): when a secondary task frequently appeared, primary task performance was slower. Additionally, there was a relative slowdown of dual-task performance in blocks wherein the secondary task appeared infrequently compared to blocks wherein it appeared frequently. However, this slowdown occurred when the primary task entailed a low level of control (Experiment 1) but was absent when it demanded a high level of control (Experiment 2). Overall, the results suggest that level of control can be adjusted to task demands related to the frequency of the secondary task.

Learning to be in control involves response-specific mechanisms.

Conflict adaptation refers to our ability to modulate our attention in line with changing situational demands, so we can engage in goal-directed behavior. While there is ample evidence demonstrating that such adaptation in conflict tasks can be captured using different response modalities, it remains unknown whether these effects rely on domain-general mechanisms applied to different response modalities, or are the result of more inherently response-specific processes. Here, we used an individual-differences approach to evaluate whether conflict adaptation in two highly similar tasks using different response modalities are related. Specifically, participants performed two versions of a Stroop task, one in which they responded via key presses and one in which they responded via mouse movements. In both tasks, we manipulated the item-specific proportion of (in)congruent trials (80% vs. 20% congruent). This allowed us to evaluate the item-specific proportion congruency (ISPC) effect, a hallmark indicator of conflict adaptation. ISPC effects were observed in both response modalities. However, we found no indications that individual differences in the ISPC effects of the two response modalities were related. This raises the question whether findings from studies on conflict adaptation measured by different modalities can reliably be compared. Furthermore, these results suggest that response modality plays a more integrative role in these adaptive processes, rather than being the mere output of a domain-general control mechanism. This is consistent with contingency learning accounts of the ISPC effect and associative learning models of cognitive control.