Adaptation to (non)valent task disturbance

Abstract

The cognitive system adapts to disturbances caused by task-irrelevant information. For example, interference due to irrelevant spatial stimulation (e.g., the spatial Simon effect) typically diminishes right after a spatially incongruent event. These adaptation effects reflect processes that help to overcome the impact of task-irrelevant information. Interference with (or interruption of) task processing can also result from valent (i.e., positive or negative) stimuli, such as in the "affective Simon" task. In the present study, we tested whether the resolution of valence-based task disturbances generalizes to the resolution of other cognitive (spatial) types of interference, and vice versa. Experiments 1 and 2 explored the interplay of adaptation effects triggered by spatial and affective interference. Incongruent spatial information modified the spatial Simon effect but not affective interference effects, whereas incongruent affective information modified affective interference effects to some extent, but not spatial Simon effects. In Experiment 3, we investigated the interplay of adaptation effects triggered by spatial interference and by the interruption of task processing from valent information that did not overlap with the main task ("emotional Stroop" effect). Again we observed domain-specific adaptation for the spatial Simon effect but found no evidence for cross-domain modulations. We assume that the processes used to resolve task disturbance from irrelevant affective and spatial information operate in largely independent manners.

Creatures of habit (and control): a multi-level learning perspective on the modulation of congruency effects

“…Here, the adaptation-by-binding model would predict generalizable benefits of conflict-enhanced binding of attention to (especially task-relevant) stimulus features, regardless of which type of conflict elicited the putative arousal response and binding process; this runs counter to empirical findings, however, because even with identical task-relevant features (e.g., ink color), conflict-general CSEs are not observed in such studies (Wendt et al, 2006; Egner et al, 2007; Boy et al, 2010; Akcay and Hazeltine, 2011; Schlaghecken et al, 2011; Kim et al, 2012; Kunde et al, 2012). There are some studies showing CSEs to selectively cross “conflict boundaries” when task-relevant features are shared rather than distinct (e.g., Notebaert and Verguts, 2008), but in these studies, changes between conflict types also represent switches between tasks, such that they cannot directly speak to the conflict-specificity (or lack thereof) of CSEs (see Egner, 2008).…”

“…First, we can likely reject the notion of a very general effect, whereby exposure to an incongruent trial would lead to broad performance benefits regardless of the specifics of the task-demands on the forthcoming trial. This rejection is based on a large number of studies that have documented the CSE to be domain- or conflict-specific (e.g., Wendt et al, 2006; Egner et al, 2007; Boy et al, 2010; Funes et al, 2010; Akcay and Hazeltine, 2011; Schlaghecken et al, 2011; Kim et al, 2012; Kunde et al, 2012; for reviews, see Egner, 2008; Braem et al, 2014). Such conflict-specificity is most appropriately assessed in protocols that combine factorially two distinct types of conflict into a single task, such that the independence of conflicts (i.e., additive main effects) and their potential sequential (in)-dependence can be assessed simultaneously, and in the absence of potential task-switching effects when alternating between conflicts in a non-factorial design (for an extended discussion, see Egner, 2008).…”

The heterogeneous world of congruency sequence effects: an update

“…Following its initial report in the context of an Eriksen flanker task (Gratton et al, 1992), it was replicated in a wide variety of tasks, including the color–word (e.g., Kerns et al, 2004), numerical (e.g., Cohen Kadosh et al, 2011), and gender face-word Stroop (e.g., Egner et al, 2008), the social (e.g., Kunde et al, 2012) and spatial Simon (e.g., Stürmer et al, 2002), the parity judgment (e.g., the spatial–numerical association of response codes or SNARC effect; Pfister et al, 2013), the picture–word interference (e.g., Duthoo et al, in revision), the perceptual fluency (e.g., Dreisbach and Fischer, 2011), the prime-target (e.g., Kunde and Wühr, 2006), and affective priming task (e.g., Frings and Wentura, 2008). Also in studies on arithmetics, difficulty arising from inappropriate strategy execution is susceptible to sequential, trial-to-trial performance adjustments (e.g., Uittenhove and Lemaire, 2012; Lemaire and Hinault, 2013).…”

“…Still, this experimental strategy is somewhat problematic: by excluding more and more trial transitions, the decision on the presence or absence of a CSE is made on an increasingly small and thus special subset of the data. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, Notebaert and Verguts (2007) proposed a multiple regression approach to statistically separate the influence of bottom-up feature repetitions and top-down control (see also Braem et al, 2012; Kunde et al, 2012). Another solution is to preclude trial transitions that are contaminated with feature integration a priori .…”

What determines the specificity of conflict adaptation? A review, critical analysis, and proposed synthesis

“…Kim et al ( 2012 ) also found conflict type specific CSEs when using a factorial combination of an arrow and color Stroop task. Last, Kunde et al ( 2012 ) extended this research into the affective domain, by factorially combining a Simon task and an affective interference task. The affective interference task either consisted of a conflict between the relevant and irrelevant stimulus dimension (i.e., affective pictures and affective words, Experiment 1), or a conflict between the relevant response and irrelevant stimulus dimension (i.e., affective verbal responses and smiley faces, Experiment 2).…”