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Acta Psychologica
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Achva Academic College, Israel
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 12 February 2015
Received in revised form 14 December 2015
Accepted 15 December 2015
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Automaticity of reading
Item-specic proportion congruent effect
Informational conict
Task conict
Contingency learning
Cognitive control
a b s t r a c t
A contingency learning account of the item-specic proportion congruent effect has been described as an associative stimulusresponse learning process that has nothing to do with controlling the Stroop conict. As supportive evidence, contingency learning has been demonstrated with response conict-free stimuli, such as
neutral words. However, what gives rise to response conict and to Stroop interference in general is task conict.
The present study investigated whether task conict can constitute a trigger or, alternatively, a booster to the
contingency learning process. This was done by employing a task conict-free condition (i.e., geometric
shapes) and comparing it with a task conict condition (i.e., neutral words). The results showed a signicant
contingency learning effect in both conditions, refuting the possibility that contingency learning is triggered by
the presence of a task conict. Contingency learning was also not enhanced by the task conict experience, indicating its complete insensitivity to Stroop conict(s). Thus, the results showed no evidence that performance optimization as a result of contingency learning is greater under conict, implying that contingency learning is not
recruited to assist the control system to overcome conict.
2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Reading is an acquired human ability to decode and interpret visual
lexical symbols. In adults, this ability is known to be automatic, that is, it
occurs whenever a lexical stimulus is encountered. The most dramatic
demonstration of the automaticity of the reading process is an interference effect obtained in the Stroop task (Stroop, 1935). In this task, participants have to name the color of visually presented words (e.g., blue for
the stimulus RED presented in blue ink) while ignoring their meaning
(e.g., the word RED). There is no need to read the words to accomplish
the task and yet reading occurs, as evidenced by slower response times
for incongruent stimuli (e.g., RED in blue ink) than for neutral letter
strings (e.g., XXXX in blue ink). The fact that reading takes place in
spite of the fact that it is not required, and even interferes with performance, demonstrates its automaticity (Perlman & Tzelgov, 2006).
The interference, or conict, produced by the automatic performance of the irrelevant reading task has been shown to be a target of
cognitive control. That is, when a conict becomes too strong, cognitive
control is able to reduce it. Much evidence for that ability of the cognitive system came from a bulk of studies that manipulated the proportion of congruent vs. incongruent stimuli to control the Stroop effect
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.12.009
0001-6918/ 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
(e.g. Logan, 1985; Logan & Zbrodoff, 1979). The main nding of these
studies, or what is known as the list-wide proportion-congruent effect, was that the magnitude of the observed interference effect was
smaller when the experienced conict was too strong (i.e., large proportion of incongruent trials in the list).
Several models have been proposed to explain the mechanism by
which conict is reduced in the Stroop task (a conict-monitoring
framework; Blais, Robidoux, Risko, & Besner, 2007; Botvinick, Braver,
Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001; Botvinick, Cohen, & Carter, 2004; De
Pisapia & Braver, 2006). According to Botvinick et al.'s (2001);
Botvinick et al.'s (2004) conict-monitoring architecture, increasing
the proportion of incongruent trials raises the amount of (response)
conict (i.e., stronger competition between the response activated by
the color-naming process and the irrelevant response activated by reading). The elevation in conict is detected by the conict-monitoring
unit, which in turn signals units responsible for control exertion. The
control is achieved through focusing attention on the relevant task.
This way the irrelevant reading task does not get much attention and
the conict it produces is considerably reduced.
It has also been proposed that the control system is not just able to
reduce the conict accumulated at the list level, but is also exible
enough to reduce the conict produced by specic items in the list
(Bugg, Jacoby, & Chanani, 2011; Bugg, Jacoby, & Toth, 2008; see also
Blais et al., 2007). The item-specic proportion-congruent effect
(Jacoby, Lindsay, & Hessels, 2003; Jacoby, McElree, & Trainham, 1999)
demonstrates that when the proportion of incongruent stimuli is
40
2
As opposed to acquisition of learning that was not affected by the amount of conict
(manipulated by the proportion of congruent trials) at the training phase.
conict. This is obviously the most efcient way that solves the problem
from the rootif you want to protect the performance from interference, eliminate the cause of the interference. However, as the results
of the aforementioned studies suggest, there might be another way to
assist maintaining good performance in the face of conict, namely,
recruitment of the implicit learning processes and stronger reliance on
what was learned by these processes. For example, learning what button should be pushed when the word that appears is red
(i.e., contingency learning) allows shortening the time that is needed
to respond, thus promoting better performance. Such performanceboosting learning seems to be especially useful when performance has
been damaged by conict. That is, it is conceivable that in conict situations, the control system, along with its attempts to reduce the conict,
might also engage/enhance such an implicit learning process that may
help to maintain performance in a faster and resource-saving way.
3
Note that in a typical Stroop experiment, each color concept requires a different vocal
response, so in such experiments, response conict and informational conict are confounded (but for a manual response design allowing decoupling of this confound see De
Houwer, 2003). Thus, in the present article we do not distinguish between these two types
of conict and when mentioning response conict we refer to both the informational
and response conicts.
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2. Method
2.1. Participants
Forty-two undergraduate students at Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev (25 females and 17 males, mean age = 25 years old, SD = 2.3),
who were native speakers of Hebrew, participated in the experiment
and were paid 25 NIS. All participants reported having normal or
corrected-to-normal vision acuity, as well as normal color vision. No
4
Note, by main origin we do not mean the task conict contributes most of the Stroop
effect in a classic color-word task, but that it has a key role in initiation of the interference.
Simply put, without engaging in the irrelevant reading task, there would be no Stroop interference no matter what stimulus type (incongruent/neutral word) is used.
5
Based on the results of Deroost et al. (2012) showing that conict only affects the expression but not the acquisition of learning, we believe that the triggering is a less likely
scenario than the enhancement. However, since we use another paradigm than the one
used originally by Deroost et al., it would not be experimentally correct not to consider this
possibility as well.
42
2.2. Materials
For half of the participants the stimuli were four-letter neutral words
(plane, cake, doll, cat) in Hebrew, and for the other half the stimuli were
geometric shapes (circle, triangle, rhombus, rectangle). All word stimuli
were printed in 42-point David font and subtended a visual angle of 1.3
degrees vertically and 2.9 degrees horizontally from a viewing distance
of 60 cm. The shape stimuli subtended a visual angle of 1.7 degrees vertically and 1.6 degrees horizontally. Importantly, both stimulus conditions were matched with respect to the amount of perceptual
information. Thus, each shape was made up of relatively the same number of pixels as the mean number of pixels within the words (1152.75
and 1117.25 pixels for shapes and words, respectively).
Stimuli could appear in one of the four colors: red, blue, green,
and yellow. Color was not allowed to repeat in consecutive trials.
There were 384 trials in the experiment. In the high-contingency condition, each of four words/shapes was paired with a specic (randomly selected for each item) color in 72 trials, resulting in a total
of 288 high-contingency trials (75%). In the low-contingency condition,
each of four words/shapes was presented 8 times in each of the three
remaining colors, resulting in a total of 96 low-contingency trials
(25%).
2.3. Procedure
The stimuli were presented on a Dell 19-inch monitor with a resolution of 1280 1024 pixels. Stimulus presentation was controlled by
OpenSesame 2.8.0 software (Matht, Schreij, & Theeuwes, 2012). Participants sat approximately 60 cm from the computer screen. They
were told to name the color of the stimulus appearing at the center of
the screen as accurately and as fast as possible. Responses were made
manually by pressing a key on a keyboard: a for blue, z for green,
k for red, and m for yellow. The response buttons were marked
with appropriate colored stickers.
The experiment started with a 32-trial practice session. During the
practice, each stimulus appeared equally often in each color. Following the practice, participants performed 384 experimental trials. Participants were given two 2-second breaks during the experiment
session.
The experimental trial started with a xation white cross that
remained at the center of the screen until the participant pressed the
SPACE bar with their thumb. The xation was followed by a blank
screen for 500 ms. After that the target appeared and remained visible
until a response was made or for 2000 ms. For every trial in which the
participant was not fast enough to respond, a feedback message was
presented on screen for 1000 ms: You did not respond! Please
focus! A trial ended with a blank black display that was presented for
300 ms. In addition, feedback was given to the participants each time
they made a mistake: You made a mistake! Please focus! The feedback
message appeared on the screen for 1000 ms.
2.4. Design
The design of the experiment included two variables. Stimulus category (neutral words/shapes) was treated as a between participant factor. Participants were assigned to each level of the stimulus category
in a counterbalanced manner. The second variable was contingency
level (high contingency/low contingency) and was manipulated within
participants.
RTs slower than 2000 ms were not allowed by the experiment program.
Note, the insignicance of this effect is attributed to a smaller sensitivity of the
between-participant design.
7
Fig. 1. Response latencies for contingency and stimulus category. Vertical bars represent
standard error of the mean.
conditions, in our study a larger contingency learning effect was observed under a conict-free condition. One possible reason for that inconsistency might be that in contrast to other implicit learning
processes that are reported as not being related to such high-order cognitions such as working memory (Siegelman & Frost, 2015) and attention resources (Jimnez & Mndez, 1999; Turk-Browne, Junge, &
Scholl, 2005), contingency learning might depend on them. It has
been shown, for example, that working memory load weakens the contingency learning effect (Schmidt, De Houwer, & Besner, 2010). Loading
working memory, however, means reducing the amount of attention
resources devoted to the task/process of interest. Therefore, contingency learning might be sensitive to the amount of available attention
resources. This is consistent with the smaller contingency learning effect found in our study for word stimuli. Words automatically trigger
another taskreadingwhereas shapes do not. Performing an additional task consumes attentional resources that otherwise would be devoted to the learning of contingencies. Such sensitivity of the
contingency learning with respect to available attention resources,
which of course should further be investigated in future studies,
seems to be consistent with demonstrated immunity of the contingency learning to conict experience. That is, since the cognitive system
ideally maintains good performance at minimal cost (for a discussion
see Goldfarb & Henik, 2014), it might be protable for the cognitive system to enhance only those implicit learning processes that do not require much cognitive resources. If contingency learning indeed
consumes attention resources then enhancing it in conict situations
may provide no advantage or may even cause more harm to performance, which explains why the contingency learning effect was not enlarged under a conict condition in the present study.
Another issue that has already been partially acknowledged in the
introduction section is the apparent similarities existing between contingency learning and what is known as implicit learning. The latter
includes various learning processes such as probabilistic sequence
learning (Nissen & Bullemer, 1987), articial grammar learning
(Reber, 1967) and statistical learning (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996)
that refer to the basic ability of the cognitive system to pick up the regularities existing in a continuous environment. Implicit learning is traditionally described as an associative, unintentional process that
proceeds automatically, as by product of mere exposure (Saffran,
Johnson, Aslin, & Newport, 1999) for the purpose of generating expectations (Siegelman & Frost, 2015; for review see Cleeremans,
Destrebecqz, & Boyer, 1998). Thus, for example, in a serial-response
43
8
Another variation of this paradigm employs a between-subject design in which the effect of sequence learning is estimated by comparing the performance of the group that is
exposed to the sequenced target appearance with the performance of the group exposed
to a random target appearance.
44
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