1,138 research outputs found
Replication of Weissman et al. (2020), Experiment 1
No full textThe congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. Robust CSEs often appear in the prime-probe task, wherein an initial prime (usually a distractor) precedes a subsequent probe (usually a target). Recent findings indicate a CSE appears in mean probe reaction time (RT) and mean probe error rate (ER), however, even when participants respond to both the initial prime and the subsequent probe, such that there are no distractors (Grant & Weissman, 2019; Weissman, 2019; Weissman et al., 2017). Furthermore, a CSE appears in this “modified prime-probe task” even when subjects respond to the prime and probe in each trial using fingers on different hands (Weissman, Grant, and Jones, 2020). These findings indicate that “response-general” control processes (i.e., control processes that can modulate multiple responses) give rise to the CSE. However, several questions remain unanswered about the nature of response-general control processes. To answer these questions, we will first conduct a replication of Experiment 1 from Weissman et al. (2020). However, we will utilize an online version of the task via Prolific. The purpose is to establish whether or not we can observe a CSE in an online setting
Conceptual Replication of Weissman et al. (2020, Experiment 2)
No full textThe congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. Robust CSEs often appear in the prime-probe task, wherein an initial prime (usually a distractor) precedes a subsequent probe (usually a target). Recent findings indicate a CSE appears in mean probe reaction time (RT) and mean probe error rate (ER), however, even when participants respond to both the initial prime and the subsequent probe, such that there are no distractors (Grant & Weissman, 2019; Weissman, 2019; Weissman et al., 2017). Furthermore, a CSE appears in this “modified prime-probe task” even when subjects respond to the prime and probe in each trial using fingers on different hands (Weissman, Grant, and Jones, 2020). These findings indicate that “response-general” control processes (i.e., control processes that can modulate multiple responses) give rise to the CSE. However, several questions remain unanswered about the nature of response-general control processes
Replication of Weissman et al. (2020), Experiment 1 - Revised Preregistration
No full textThe congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. Robust CSEs often appear in the prime-probe task, wherein an initial prime (usually a distractor) precedes a subsequent probe (usually a target). Recent findings indicate a CSE appears in mean probe reaction time (RT) and mean probe error rate (ER), however, even when participants respond to both the initial prime and the subsequent probe, such that there are no distractors (Grant & Weissman, 2019; Weissman, 2019; Weissman et al., 2017). Furthermore, a CSE appears in this “modified prime-probe task” even when subjects respond to the prime and probe in each trial using fingers on different hands (Weissman, Grant, and Jones, 2020). These findings indicate that “response-general” control processes (i.e., control processes that can modulate multiple responses) give rise to the CSE. However, several questions remain unanswered about the nature of response-general control processes. To answer these questions, we will first conduct a replication of Experiment 1 from Weissman et al. (2020). However, we will utilize an online version of the task via Prolific. The purpose is to establish whether or not we can observe a CSE in an online setting
Weissman et al. (2020, Experiment 2) on non-homologous fingers (ABCD-1234)
No full textThe congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. Robust CSEs often appear in the prime-probe task, wherein an initial prime (usually a distractor) precedes a subsequent probe (usually a target). Recent findings indicate a CSE appears in mean probe reaction time (RT) and mean probe error rate (ER), however, even when participants respond to both the initial prime and the subsequent probe, such that there are no distractors (Grant & Weissman, 2019; Weissman, 2019; Weissman et al., 2017). Furthermore, a CSE appears in this “modified prime-probe task” even when subjects respond to the prime and probe in each trial using fingers on different hands (Weissman, Grant, and Jones, 2020). These findings indicate that “response-general” control processes (i.e., control processes that can modulate multiple responses) give rise to the CSE. However, several questions remain unanswered about the nature of response-general control processes. To begin to answer these questions, we will conduct a variant of Experiment 2 from Weissman et al. (2020). However, we will utilize an online version of the task via Prolific
Weissman et al. (2020, Experiment 1) on non-homologous fingers (ABCD-ABCD)
No full textThe congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. Robust CSEs often appear in the prime-probe task, wherein an initial prime (usually a distractor) precedes a subsequent probe (usually a target). Recent findings indicate a CSE appears in mean probe reaction time (RT) and mean probe error rate (ER), even when subjects respond to both the initial prime and the subsequent probe, such that there are no distractors (Grant & Weissman, 2019; Weissman, 2019; Weissman et al., 2017). Furthermore, a CSE appears in this “modified prime-probe task” even when subjects respond to the prime and probe in each trial using fingers on different hands (Weissman, Grant, and Jones, 2020). In an initial experiment involving this specific paradigm, the prime and probe stimuli were identical letters, and the primes and probes of congruent trials were mapped to anatomically corresponding (i.e., homologous) fingers on the left and right hands. Thus, control processes could be using four types of congruency relations to produce the observed CSE in Experiment 1 of Weissman et al. (2020): 1) perceptual stimulus relations, since the prime and probe were the same letter in congruent trials but not incongruent trials; 2) categorical stimulus relations, since the prime and probe were the same letter category in congruent trials but not incongruent trials; 3) anatomical response relations, since the prime and probe were mapped to homologous finger responses in congruent but not incongruent trials; and 4) spatial response relations, since the prime and probe were mapped to spatially corresponding (i.e., from inner to outer on each hand) finger responses in congruent but not incongruent trials. To begin to better understand which congruency relation(s) these control processes use to produce a CSE, we will conduct a series of experiments. The first will be a variant of Experiment 1 from Weissman et al. (2020), wherein anatomical response relations cannot be used. More specifically, we will investigate whether control processes can engender a CSE (Weissman et al., 2020) when the primes and probes are mapped to spatially, but not anatomically, corresponding fingers (i.e., non-homologous fingers)
Weissman et al. (2020, Experiment 2) on non-homologous fingers (ABCD-1234)
No full textThe congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. Robust CSEs often appear in the prime-probe task, wherein an initial prime (usually a distractor) precedes a subsequent probe (usually a target). Recent findings indicate a CSE appears in mean probe reaction time (RT) and mean probe error rate (ER), even when subjects respond to both the initial prime and the subsequent probe, such that there are no distractors (Grant & Weissman, 2019; Weissman, 2019; Weissman et al., 2017). Furthermore, a CSE appears in this “modified prime-probe task” even when subjects respond to the prime and probe in each trial using fingers on different hands (Weissman, Grant, and Jones, 2020).
In Experiment 1 of Weissman et al. (2020), the prime and probe in congruent trials were the same letter (both A, both B, both C, or both D). Further, these letters were mapped to anatomically corresponding (i.e., homologous) fingers on the left and right hands. Here, control processes could be using four types of congruency relations to produce the observed CSE: 1) perceptual congruency relations, since the prime and probe were the same letter in congruent trials but not incongruent trials; 2) categorical congruency relations, since the prime and probe came from the same letter category in congruent trials but not incongruent trials; 3) anatomical congruency relations, since the prime and probe were mapped to homologous finger responses in congruent but not incongruent trials; and 4) spatial congruency relations, since the prime and probe were mapped to spatially corresponding (i.e., from inner to outer on each hand) finger responses in congruent but not incongruent trials. Experiment 2 of Weissman et al. (2020) demonstrated that control processes can engender a CSE in the absence of perceptual congruency relations, since the primes (A, B, C, and D) were different than the probes (1, 2, 3, and 4) across all trial types.
More recently, this research group showed that anatomical congruency relations are not necessary to observe a CSE. This was accomplished using a prime-probe task wherein the primes (A, B, C, and D) and probes (A, B, C, and D) were mapped to spatially, but not anatomically, corresponding fingers in congruent but not incongruent trials (i.e., non-homologous fingers; Tran et al., unpublished). The results indicated a robust CSE, which could only have been driven by perceptual congruency relations, categorical congruency relations, or spatial congruency relations between the responses.
To better understand which congruency relations control processes use to produce a CSE, we will conduct a second experiment. The second experiment will be a variant of Experiment 2 from Weissman et al. (2020), wherein neither perceptual stimulus relations nor anatomical response relations can be used to produce a CSE. More specifically, we will investigate whether control processes can engender a CSE (Weissman et al., 2020) when the prime (A, B, C, or D) and probe (1, 2, 3, or 4) differ in both congruent and incongruent trials and are mapped to spatially, but not anatomically, corresponding fingers (i.e., non-homologous fingers) in congruent trials. In this task, control processes can use only categorical congruency relations and/or spatial congruency relations between the responses to engender a CSE
Recommended from our members
Evan Weissman: Food studies scholar and hometown scholar-activist
No full textFirst paragraph:
In order to find a tenure-track job in their field, academics often must move far from their hometown and the university they graduated from. Evan Weissman was the rare academic who had the opportunity to stay at the university that granted him his Ph.D. and, even rarer, stay in his hometown of Syracuse, New York. He acknowledged the privilege of this situation in his remarkable article, “Privilege and Mistake Making in the Practice of Activist-Scholarship” (Weissman, 2018). In addition to stating his privilege as a white, male, able-bodied person, gainfully employed in a job that allowed him to follow his interests and do community-engaged work within the framework of academic freedom, he commented specifically on working in his hometown. He stated, “I am privileged to work and live in my hometown, where I have deep personal and political commitments. Because I live and work in my hometown, the traditional line between my identities and positions as community member and scholar are blurred” (Weissman, 2018, p. 1069). He went on to discuss the difficulty with attempting to be a scholar-activist without being seen as one or the other, particularly in a city such as Syracuse with an expensive private school located in a city with a large low-income population and a large degree of inequality, with a large town/gown separation. . .
Modified PCE - Experiment 2: Is the proportion congruency effect (PCE) in the modified prime-probe task associated with pre-probe changes in anticipatory response force?
No full textIn distractor-interference tasks, the congruency effect is smaller after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. This congruency sequence effect (CSE), which is robust even without prevalent confounds (Schmidt & Weissman, 2014; Weissman et al., 2014), indicates that people are less distractible just after they experience high (vs. low) amounts of distraction in incongruent (vs. congruent) trials. Consequently, the CSE has become a popular phenomenon among researchers who investigate the manner in which adaptive control processes minimize distraction from irrelevant stimuli.
Adaptive control processes appear to produce the largest CSEs when the distractor is translated into a response well before the target. Evidence for this “head start” hypothesis comes from two key findings. First, the CSE is larger when a distractor appears shortly (e.g., 166 ms) before a target than when a distractor and a target appear at the same time (Weissman, Egner, et al., 2015). Second, even with simultaneous presentation of the distractor and target, the CSE is often larger in tasks wherein the distractor is translated much more quickly into a response than the target (e.g., the Simon task) than in tasks wherein the distractor is translated only a little more quickly into a response than the target (e.g., the manual flanker task) (Weissman et al., 2014).
These findings are consistent with the view that control processes produce the CSE by modulating the response cued by the distractor (and/or other responses) differently after incongruent relative to congruent trials (e.g., Ridderinkhof, 2002; Sturmer et al., 2002). For example, control processes may (a) enhance the response cued by the distractor after congruent trials and/or (b) inhibit the response cued by the distractor (or activate the opposite response) after incongruent trials. Critically, modulating (e.g., inhibiting) response activation is a time-consuming process (Ridderinkhof, 2002). Thus, only when the distractor has a “head start” over the target during stimulus-response translation do control processes have sufficient time to produce a large CSE.
Findings to support this “response modulation account” of the CSE come from studies wherein a long (500-1000 ms) interstimulus interval (ISI) separates the initial distractor from the subsequent target, which eliminates the overall congruency effect (Weissman, Egner, et al., 2015; Weissman, Hawks, & Egner, 2016). In these studies, the CSE is often associated with a negative congruency effect after incongruent trials. This negative congruency effect is consistent with inhibition of the response cued by the distractor, which should slow responses in congruent relative to incongruent trials.
In contrast, these findings appear inconsistent with the popular “conflict monitoring” account of adaptive control (Botvinick et al., 2001). First, in this account, conflict - as indexed by the presence of an overall congruency effect (Yeung et al., 2011) - is necessary to trigger adaptive control processes underlying the CSE. Second, the presence of a negative congruency effect after incongruent trials is not consistent with a shift of attention away from the distractor and toward the target. Indeed, even completely ignoring the distractor could eliminate the congruency effect but not reverse it.
In a prior experiment, we investigated whether conflict is necessary to trigger the proportion congruency (PC) effect (Bugg, 2014; Logan & Zbrodoff, 1979; Spinelli & Lupker, 2019). The PC effect refers to the finding that congruency effects are larger in blocks of mostly congruent trials than in blocks of mostly incongruent trials. To our knowledge, however, no study before ours had investigated whether the PC effect can appear in the absence of an overall congruency effect (i.e., worse performance in incongruent relative to congruent trials). We observed such an outcome in a prime-probe task wherein the distractor appeared 933 ms before the target. Moreover, the PC effect in this condition was associated with a negative congruency effect in blocks of mostly incongruent trials. These findings suggest that non-conflict control processes (i.e., those that modulate response activation) can produce not only a CSE but also a PC effect.
In another experiment, we found that the PCE does not differ between the standard and modified prime-probe tasks, even though the CSE is greater in the modified vs standard prime-probe task (Weissman et al., 2017; Grant & Weissman, 2019; Grant & Weissman, 2022). This result is consistent with current views of the CSE and the PCE. The CSE is thought to depend on retrieving a memory of the previous trial's congruency, which is disrupted in the standard prime-probe task by switching between different S-R mappings for the prime ("do not respond") and the probe ("respond") (e.g., Grant & Weissman, 2022). In contrast, the PCE depends on remembering (or maintaining) the block wide congruency (mostly congruent or mostly incongruent), which does not depend as much on retrieving a memory of the previous trial and, therefore, should not be disrupted as much by switching between different S-R mappings for the prime and the probe.
More broadly, our finding that the PCE does not differ between the modified and standard prime-probe tasks indicates that the adaptive control mechanism that produces the PCE in these tasks is not sensitive to whether the prime is (1) a distractor (in the standard prime-probe task) or (2) the first of two targets (in the modified prime-probe task). This outcome indicates that the mechanism that produces the PCE in these tasks makes a broader contribution to cognition than coping with distraction from irrelevant stimuli. In particular, it suggests that this mechanism tracks statistical regularities in the environment (e.g., mostly congruent) and modulates response activation to plan future responses that fit with those regularities. We have made analogous suggestions regarding the mechanism underlying CSE (e.g., Weissman, Egner, et al., 2015).
In the present study, we will seek to obtain more direct evidence that the PC effect in the modified prime-probe task indexes control processes that modulate response activation. As in a prior study of the CSE in the modified prime-probe task (Weissman, 2019), we will measure pre-probe anticipatory response force. If the PC effect indexes a modulation of anticipatory response activation, then average force 0-200 ms before probe onset should tend to be greater on the response key cued by the prime (i.e., the prime-congruent key) in mostly congruent blocks and/or on the opposite key (i.e., the prime-ncongruent key) in mostly incongruent blocks. In other words, we should observe an interaction between proportion congruency (mostly congruent, mostly incongruent) and response key (prime-congruent, prime-incongruent). On the other hand, if the PC effect indexes other processes (e.g., congruency switch costs that occur only after the probe appears), then no such anticipatory force effects should appear
Modified PCE - Experiment 1: Is the proportion congruency effect (PCE) in the prime-probe arrow task when participants respond to both the prime and the probe as compared to only the prime?
No full textIn distractor-interference tasks, the congruency effect is smaller after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. This congruency sequence effect (CSE), which is robust even without prevalent confounds (Schmidt & Weissman, 2014; Weissman et al., 2014), indicates that people are less distractible just after they experience high (vs. low) amounts of distraction in incongruent (vs. congruent) trials. Consequently, the CSE has become a popular phenomenon among researchers who investigate the manner in which adaptive control processes minimize distraction from irrelevant stimuli.
Adaptive control processes appear to produce the largest CSEs when the distractor is translated into a response well before the target. Evidence for this “head start” hypothesis comes from two key findings. First, the CSE is larger when a distractor appears shortly (e.g., 166 ms) before a target than when a distractor and a target appear at the same time (Weissman, Egner, et al., 2015). Second, even with simultaneous presentation of the distractor and target, the CSE is often larger in tasks wherein the distractor is translated much more quickly into a response than the target (e.g., the Simon task) than in tasks wherein the distractor is translated only a little more quickly into a response than the target (e.g., the manual flanker task) (Weissman et al., 2014).
These findings are consistent with the view that control processes produce the CSE by modulating the response cued by the distractor (and/or other responses) differently after incongruent relative to congruent trials (e.g., Ridderinkhof, 2002; Sturmer et al., 2002). For example, control processes may (a) enhance the response cued by the distractor after congruent trials and/or (b) inhibit the response cued by the distractor (or activate the opposite response) after incongruent trials. Critically, modulating (e.g., inhibiting) response activation is a time-consuming process (Ridderinkhof, 2002). Thus, only when the distractor has a “head start” over the target during stimulus-response translation do control processes have sufficient time to produce a large CSE.
Findings to support this “response modulation account” of the CSE come from studies wherein a long (500-1000 ms) interstimulus interval (ISI) separates the initial distractor from the subsequent target, which eliminates the overall congruency effect (Weissman, Egner, et al., 2015; Weissman, Hawks, & Egner, 2016). In these studies, the CSE is often associated with a negative congruency effect after incongruent trials. This negative congruency effect is consistent with inhibition of the response cued by the distractor, which should slow responses in congruent relative to incongruent trials.
In contrast, these findings appear inconsistent with the popular “conflict monitoring” account of adaptive control (Botvinick et al., 2001). First, in this account, conflict - as indexed by the presence of an overall congruency effect (Yeung et al., 2011) - is necessary to trigger adaptive control processes underlying the CSE. Second, the presence of a negative congruency effect after incongruent trials is not consistent with a shift of attention away from the distractor and toward the target. Indeed, even completely ignoring the distractor could eliminate the congruency effect but not reverse it.
In a prior experiment, we investigated whether conflict is necessary to trigger the proportion congruency (PC) effect (Bugg, 2014; Logan & Zbrodoff, 1979; Spinelli & Lupker, 2019). The PC effect refers to the finding that congruency effects are larger in blocks of mostly congruent trials than in blocks of mostly incongruent trials. To our knowledge, however, no study before ours had investigated whether the PC effect can appear in the absence of an overall congruency effect (i.e., worse performance in incongruent relative to congruent trials). We observed such an outcome in a prime-probe task wherein the distractor appeared 933 ms before the target. Moreover, the PC effect in this condition was associated with a negative congruency effect in blocks of mostly incongruent trials. These findings suggest that non-conflict control processes (i.e., those that modulate response activation) can produce not only a CSE but also a PC effect.
Here, we will further investigate the nature of the PC effect. Specifically, we will investigate whether it is larger when participants respond to both the prime and the probe in the so-called “modified” prime-probe task as compared to only the probe in the standard prime-probe task. Consistent with this possibility, such an increase occurs for the CSE (Weissman et al., 2017; Grant & Weissman, 2019). We have suggested that making the prime task-relevant (vs. task-irrelevant) increases the CSE by removing the need to switch between different stimulus-response (S-R) mappings (ignore the prime arrow vs. respond to the probe arrow) (Grant & Weissman, 2022), which reduces the CSE (Egner, 2008). It may also facilitate encoding the prime’s relationship to the probe (congruent or incongruent). Critically, observing a larger PC effect in the modified (vs. standard) prime-probe task would suggest that overlapping processes give rise to the CSE and the PC effect. This need not be the case, though, as some have suggested that different mechanisms (e.g., proactive vs. reactive control) underlie these effects. Even in this case, however, observing a PC effect in the modified prime-probe task would show that the mechanism that produces the PC effect is not specific to tasks with distractors. Indeed, there are only targets in the modified prime-probe task
How long do abstract congruency relations last? (Experiment 1)
No full textThe congruency sequence effect (CSE) refers to a smaller congruency effect after incongruent trials than after congruent trials. Robust CSEs often appear in the prime-probe task, wherein an initial prime (usually a distractor) precedes a subsequent probe (usually a target). Recent findings indicate a CSE appears in mean probe reaction time (RT) and mean probe error rate (ER), even when subjects respond to both the initial prime and the subsequent probe, such that there are no distractors (Grant & Weissman, 2019; Weissman, 2019; Weissman et al., 2017). Furthermore, a CSE appears in this “modified prime-probe task” even when subjects respond to the prime and probe in each trial using fingers on different hands (Weissman, Grant, and Jones, 2020).
Control processes could be using four types of abstract congruency relations - or bindings - to produce the observed CSE in Experiment 1 of Weissman et al. (2020): 1) perceptual stimulus relations, since the prime and probe were the same letter in congruent trials but not incongruent trials; 2) categorical stimulus relations, since the prime and probe were the same letter category in congruent trials but not incongruent trials; 3) anatomical response relations, since the prime and probe were mapped to homologous finger responses in congruent but not incongruent trials; and 4) spatial response relations, since the prime and probe were mapped to spatially corresponding (i.e., from inner to outer on each hand) finger responses in congruent but not incongruent trials.
More recently, this research group showed that anatomical congruency relations are not necessary to observe a CSE. This was accomplished using a prime-probe task wherein the primes (A, B, C, and D) and probes (A, B, C, and D) were mapped to spatially, but not anatomically, corresponding fingers in congruent but not incongruent trials (i.e., non-homologous fingers; Tran et al., unpublished). The results indicated a robust CSE, which could only have been driven by perceptual congruency relations, categorical congruency relations, or spatial congruency relations between the responses.
It is unclear how long these congruency relations - likely stored in event file bindings - last. To begin to understand if the CSE persists across time, we will conduct a series of experiments. The first will be a variant of Tran et al. (unpublished), wherein the response-stimulus interval (RSI) will vary (2000 ms vs. 4000 ms)
- …
