Abstract
In the present study, we followed up on a recent report of two experiments in which the congruency sequence effect—the reduction of the congruency effect after incongruent relative to congruent trials in Stroop-like tasks—was observed without feature repetition or contingency learning confounds. Specifically, we further scrutinized these data to determine the plausibility of a temporal learning account as an alternative to the popular conflict adaptation account. To this end, we employed a linear mixed effects model to investigate the role of previous response time in producing the congruency sequence effect, because previous response time is thought to influence temporal learning. Interestingly, slower previous response times were associated with a reduced current-trial congruency effect, but only when the previous trial was congruent. An adapted version of the parallel episodic processing (PEP) model was able to fit these data if it was additionally assumed that attention “wanders” during different parts of the experiment (e.g., due to fatigue or other factors). Consistent with this assumption, the magnitude of the congruency effect was correlated across small blocks of trials. These findings demonstrate that a temporal learning mechanism provides a plausible account of the congruency sequence effect.
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Notes
Figure 1 roughly illustrates why the parallel episodic processing model, discussed later, produces a larger effect of expectancy-based changes in the response threshold for congruent relative to incongruent trials. The point at which evidence for a response will begin to increase and the steepness of the slope of increasing activation will vary from trial to trial within both the congruent and incongruent conditions. The evolution of the response threshold over time will also vary from trial to trial depending on the speed of responding in the last few trials. However, the figure demonstrates why, generally, congruent trials are more affected than incongruent trials by expectancies following fast congruent relative to slow incongruent responses. Congruent trials will generally benefit from a fast expectancy, but will “beat” the response threshold dip with a slow expectancy. In contrast, incongruent trials will not only benefit from slow expectancies, but will also often be fast enough to benefit from a fast expectancy.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by start-up funds from the University of Michigan awarded to Daniel H. Weissman. James R. Schmidt is a postdoctoral researcher of the Research Foundation—Flanders (FWO—Vlaanderen). The authors would like to thank Tobias Egner, Antonio Freitas, Toby Mordkoff, Timothy Verstynen, and Yanni Liu for useful discussions related to this research.
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Schmidt, J.R., Weissman, D.H. Congruency sequence effects and previous response times: conflict adaptation or temporal learning?. Psychological Research 80, 590–607 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-015-0681-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-015-0681-x