Crump and Milliken (2009) reported a context-specific proportion congruence (CSPC) effect for inducer and diagnostic sets, the strongest evidence to date of context-specific control. Attempts to replicate/reproduce this evidence have failed, including Experiment 1. Using a picture-word Stroop task, we tackled the question of how to interpret such failures by testing the consistency hypothesis (Hutcheon & Spieler, 2017) and two novel hypotheses inspired by our theorizing about learning opportunities in the CSPC paradigm. Experiment 2 found a CSPC effect when there was no diagnostic set, supporting the consistency hypothesis. Experiment 3 produced novel evidence for item-PC learning in a CSPC paradigm. In contrast, Experiment 4 did not produce strong evidence for location-item conjunctive learning. Our findings suggest failures to replicate/reproduce the CSPC effect do not necessarily indicate a Type I error or instability but instead may indicate episodic representations were organized based on item and not location. This item-PC learning hypothesis uniquely predicted Experiment 3 findings and accommodates findings of all but one prior attempt to replicate/reproduce the CSPC effect for inducer and diagnostic sets, including Experiment 1. Predicting whether future attempts are successful will require deeper understanding of the factors that promote learning of item-PC versus location-PC associations.

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.

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In tasks such as Stroop, our past experiences with conflict influence our ability to attend to goalrelevant information and ignore irrelevant information. There exists evidence that conflict experiences on at least two timescales affect cognitive control. The "immediate" timescale is evidenced by congruency sequence effects while the "long" timescale is evidenced by list-wide proportion congruence effects. What remains underspecified is whether relatively recent experiences with conflict may also uniquely influence cognitive control and how experiences on different timescales are weighted. The present, pre-registered experiments aimed to assess the role of relatively recent conflict by examining the potential effects of an "intermediate" timescale (i.e., several preceding trials). A novel Stroop paradigm was developed to isolate the effects of the intermediate timescale and cognitive control was measured via frequency-and contingencyunbiased diagnostic items. In Experiment 1 (N = 61), I manipulated the level of conflict experienced in the intermediate timescale for lists matched in proportion congruence. Controlling for conflict experiences in the long and immediate timescales, I found that conflict in the intermediate timescale affected cognitive control. Experiment 2 (N = 60) found that the effect of conflict in the intermediate timescale may depend on that conflict defying the long timescale. These novel findings highlight the need to expand theories of cognitive control to incorporate the viii intermediate timescale and the interaction of the intermediate timescale with other timescales of cognitive control.

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