EXPRESS: The Dominance of Item Learning in the Location-Specific Proportion Congruence Paradigm

Prior research has shown that various cues are exploited to reactively adjust attention and such adjustments depend on learning associations between cues and proportion congruence. This raises the intriguing question of what will be learned when more than one cue is available, a question that has implications for understanding which cue(s) will dominate in guiding reactive adjustments. Using a picture-word Stroop task, Bugg, Suh, Colvett, and Lehmann (2020) provided initial evidence that item learning dominated over location learning in a location-specific proportion congruence (LSPC) paradigm, a pattern that may explain the difficulty researchers have faced in replicating and reproducing the LSPC effect. One goal was to reproduce this pattern using a non-overlapping two-item sets design that more closely matched prior studies, and another goal was to examine generalizability of the pattern to two other tasks. Using a prime-probe, color-word Stroop task (Experiment 1) and a flanker task (Experiment 2), we again found clear dominance of item learning. In Experiment 3, we attempted to disrupt item learning and promote location learning by using a counting procedure that directed participants’ attention to location. Once again, we found the same pattern of item dominance. Additionally, in none of the experiments did we find evidence for conjunctive (location-item) learning. Collectively, the findings suggest item learning is neither design- or task-specific; rather, it is robust, reliable, and not easily disrupted. Discussion centers on factors dictating dominance of item- over location-based adjustments and implications for the broader literature on LSPC effects.

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.