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The relative attractiveness of distractors and targets affects the coming and going of item-specific control: Evidence from flanker tasks

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Abstract

The item-specific proportion congruence (ISPC) effect refers to the attenuation of interference for mostly incongruent relative to mostly congruent items. In the present study, qualitatively different ISPC effects were observed in letter- and arrow-based flanker tasks despite their common use of the original two-item set design. Consistent with the predictions of the dual item-specific mechanisms account, contingency-driven ISPC effects were observed when stimuli were used that attracted attention to the irrelevant dimension (Experiments 1, 3, and 6), whereas control-driven ISPC effects were observed when attention was attracted to the relevant dimension (Experiments 2, 4, and 5). The evidence for control-driven ISPC effects in the two-item set design (1) challenges the contingency account, which claims that ISPC effects are solely contingency-driven, and (2) supports an expanded definition of cognitive control that includes fast and flexible adjustments that minimize attention to distractors upon encountering stimuli that have previously been associated with a history of conflict.

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Notes

  1. Frequency accounts (e.g., Logan, 1988) have therefore been evaluated as explanations of the ISPC effect. A major piece of evidence arguing against such accounts is the results of the process-dissociation procedure showing that ISPC selectively influences the word-reading process (Jacoby et al., 2003). If frequency was driving the effect, this procedure should have revealed an influence on both the color and word processes, since it is particular combinations that are more or less frequent.

  2. In prior studies (Bugg & Hutchison, 2013; Bugg et al., 2011a), the dual-ISM account was termed the “item-specific control account.” The new label was adopted to better capture the account’s position that item-specific control and contingency learning produce ISPC effects, albeit under different conditions, and to minimize potential confusion between the terms “item-specific control account” and “item-specific control.”

  3. It is possible that the symmetrical pattern suggested to characterize contingency learning in the study of Jacoby et al. (2003; see Schmidt & Besner, 2008) resulted from the operation of a contingency-learning mechanism on MC-congruent trials and an item-specific control mechanism on MI-incongruent trials. If so, the ISPC pattern that characterizes contingency learning may be an asymmetrical one in which ISPC selectively speeds MC-congruent, relative to MI-congruent, trials, including in the original two-item set design (see Bugg et al., 2011a, Experiment 3, for evidence of this pattern in a variant of the two-item sets design in which words from one set appeared with pictures from that set and the opposite set such that only MC-congruent trials were of the high contingency type).

  4. The tectonic theory of Melara and Algom (2003) was formulated in the context of Stroop tasks where dimensions referred to the relevant (color) and irrelevant (word) information. I am generalizing the theoretical assumptions to the flanker task, where the relevant dimension is the central target and the irrelevant dimension refers to the peripheral flankers.

  5. The overall slowed responding in Experiment 1, relative to Experiment 2, speaks to a recent revision of the contingency account. Schmidt (2013a) noted that Schmidt and Besner (2008) were mistaken in asserting that a contingency mechanism would not produce a stronger effect on incongruent trials. He suggested that contingency effects could actually be larger for incongruent than for congruent trials because incongruent trials take longer to process and, therefore, contingency has more time to affect behavior. Given that it took ~100 ms longer on average to respond to incongruent trials in Experiment 1 than in Experiment 2, on this view, the effect of ISPC on incongruent trials should have been stronger in Experiment 1 than in 2 if a contingency mechanism were operative in both experiments (which was not found).

  6. To evaluate whether stimulus type-specific Gratton effects contributed to the qualitatively different ISPC patterns across Experiments 1 and 2, a four-way analysis was performed with previous PC, previous trial type, current PC, and current trial type as factors. There was no evidence for a stimulus type-specific Gratton effect in either experiment (i.e., no interactions of previous PC or previous trial type with the ISPC effect, nor a four-way interaction, ps > .10).

  7. The author is grateful to an anonymous reviewer who suggested the perceptual tuning account and proposed the idea of examining alternative letter sets and using an incompatible stimulus–response assignment in the arrow-based flanker task to examine the account.

  8. One might wonder why this prediction was not (also) tested in the context of the letter-based flanker paradigm used in Experiment 5. I thought it would be difficult for participants to coordinate an incompatible stimulus–response assignment with the stimulus–response translation demands that were already evoked by the task, and this difficulty would likely exacerbate RT slowing and increase error variance.

  9. It is unclear whether the contingency account would have predicted a contingency-driven ISPC effect in Experiment 6 given the use of an incompatible stimulus–response rule, which might interfere with typical contingency learning processes.

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Author’s Note

The author is grateful to Keith Hutchison for providing feedback on a previous version of the manuscript and for helpful discussion of the differences between letter-based and arrow-based flanker paradigms. The author thanks Maxwell Coll, Molly Evans, Madeline Kleiner, Joshua Kim, Henna Mishra, Simran Sahni, Leah Sutton, and Vivian Tao for assisting with data collection and coding.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, 63130-4899, USA

    Julie M. Bugg

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Bugg, J.M. The relative attractiveness of distractors and targets affects the coming and going of item-specific control: Evidence from flanker tasks. Atten Percept Psychophys 77, 373–389 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-014-0752-x

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