Abstract
The prime-probe version of the Stroop task has been predominantly used to demonstrate the context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) effect. In this version, the location of the color is not known until its presentation, creating a spatial uncertainty for the color dimension. We propose that spatial uncertainty plays an important role in observing the CSPC effect. In this study, we investigated the role of spatial uncertainty with two experiments. In Experiment 1 (N = 53), we used a spatially separated version of the Stroop task having spatial uncertainty on the color dimension, and observed a significant CSPC effect. For Experiment 2, we conducted a preregistered prime-probe CSPC experiment with a considerably large sample (N = 128), eliminating the uncertainty of only the color dimension in one condition and both the color and the word dimensions in the other. Results showed that the CSPC effect was not observed in the first condition, while it was very small yet significant in the second condition. The Bayesian approach confirmed frequentist analyses of Experiment 1 and the first condition of Experiment 2. However, in the second condition of Experiment 2, there was no evidence regarding the existence of the CSPC effect. These findings support our claim that the spatial uncertainty of the color dimension, inherent in the prime-probe version Stroop task, contributed to the CSPC effect.
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Notes
In a standard flanker task (Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974), target and distractor (flanker) letters (or arrows) are used. As in the Stroop task, there are compatible (i.e., HHHHH or <<<<<) and incompatible (i.e., SSHSS or >><>>) stimuli. Participants respond slower to the incompatible stimulus than the compatible stimulus, since they need more time to suppress the distracting letters.
Hutcheon (2022) observed a CSPC effect with a classic integrated Stroop task while using human faces as context.
Bugg et al. (2011) also manipulated the dimensional uncertainty (contingency) in their Experiments 2 and 3. However, in the current study, we did not implement specific manipulations affecting the dimensional uncertainty. Also, it was known that there was not a strong correlation (contingency) between dimensions in the classic four-item CSPC experiments (as in the current experiments), especially in the mostly incongruent sets. Therefore, dimensional uncertainty would not be the main concept in these experiments, unlike the dimensional imbalance concept.
It is important to note that “dimensional uncertainty” and “spatial uncertainty” are different notions. In the current paper, we used the term spatial uncertainty in terms of psychophysical characteristics of the color dimension, affecting the dimensional imbalance construct. On the other hand, the term dimensional uncertainty, which was proposed by Melara and Algom (2003), is not related to the term “spatial uncertainty” used in this paper.
The magnitude of the (item-specific) proportion congruency effect in −200, −100, 0, +100 ms conditions did not differ significantly (63, 75, 69, 60 ms, respectively) in Experiment 1 in Atalay and Misirlisoy (2014), but numerically -100 ms condition has the largest proportion congruency effect (75 ms). Also, the +200 ms condition was significantly different from the other SOA conditions in Experiment 1 in terms of the ISPC effect (20 ms).
In the preregistration, there was a typo in the related section. We mistakenly stated that the word prime will be presented for 100 ms. However, preregistered experiment scripts were correct, and the duration of the word prime was 1,000 ms in the E-Prime files as intended. In addition, we tested to present the word prime for 100 ms as in the original experiment of Crump et al. (2006). However, it was almost impossible to perceive and process the word dimension, especially in the centered fixation condition.
In the preregistration, we stated that participants who have errors larger than the three-standard deviation from average percentage of errors of all participants will be removed from the data. However, overall error rates were quite low. For this reason, we discarded this rule in order to prevent removing data of participants who became outlier with only five erroneous responses out of 384 in total.
The congruency sequence effect corresponds to a smaller congruency effect following incongruent items compared with congruent items.
Experiment 1–1. Block: F(1, 48) = 1.84, MSE = 417.78, p = .18, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .04; Experiment 1–2. Block: F(1, 48) = 13.44, MSE = 427.04, p < .001, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .22; Experiment 2–Centered fixation–1. Block: F(1, 63) = 2.62, MSE = 290.70, p = .11, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .04; Experiment 2–Centered fixation–2. Block: F(1, 63) = 0.03, MSE = 228.93, p = .87, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .001; Experiment 2–Up–down fixation–1. Block: F(1, 63) = 4.94, MSE = 312.09, p = .03, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .07; Experiment 2–Up–down fixation–2. Block: F(1, 63) = 1.73, MSE = 655.45, p = .19, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .03.
Experiment 1: F(1, 48) = 11.19, MSE = 440.53, p = .002, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .19; Experiment 2–Centered fixation: F(1, 63) = 0.76, MSE = 327.58, p = .39, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .01; Experiment 2–Up–down fixation: F(1, 63) = 1.06, MSE = 418.11, p = .31, \({\eta }_{{\text{p}}}^{2}\) = .02.
We thank our reviewer for suggesting this explanation.
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Funding
Part of this work was supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK) under Grant No. 113K530. O.B. was supported by the Council of Higher Education of Türkiye (Yükseköğretim Kurulu)-100/2000 scholarship program (2020–2022) and 2211/A-National PhD Scholarship Program of The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK).
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Approvals were obtained from the ethics committees of TOBB University of Economics and Technology University and Middle East Technical University. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.
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Experiment 2 was the unpublished master thesis of Ozge Bozkurt at Middle East Technical University and was presented at the V. National Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Symposium at Istanbul/Türkiye in September 2019.
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The data and materials for Experiment 1 are available in OSF’s Repository (https://osf.io/xj9qt/). Experiment 2 was preregistered to OSF (https://osf.io/hytup), and data and materials are available at its repository (https://osf.io/fjsg6/)
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Bozkurt, O., Misirlisoy, M. & Atalay, N.B. The role of spatial uncertainty in the context-specific proportion congruency effect. Atten Percept Psychophys (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-024-02865-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-024-02865-y