In Support of a Distinction between Voluntary and Stimulus-Driven Control: A Review of the Literature on Proportion Congruent Effects

Abstract

Cognitive control is by now a large umbrella term referring collectively to multiple processes that plan and coordinate actions to meet task goals. A common feature of paradigms that engage cognitive control is the task requirement to select relevant information despite a habitual tendency (or bias) to select goal-irrelevant information. At least since the 1970s, researchers have employed proportion congruent (PC) manipulations to experimentally establish selection biases and evaluate the mechanisms used to control attention. PC manipulations vary the frequency with which irrelevant information conflicts (i.e., is incongruent) with relevant information. The purpose of this review is to summarize the growing body of literature on PC effects across selective attention paradigms, beginning first with Stroop, and then describing parallel effects in flanker and task-switching paradigms. The review chronologically tracks the expansion of the PC manipulation from its initial implementation at the list-wide level, to more recent implementations at the item-specific and context-specific levels. An important theoretical aim is demonstrating that PC effects at different levels (e.g., list-wide vs. item or context-specific) support a distinction between voluntary forms of cognitive control, which operate based on anticipatory information, and relatively automatic or reflexive forms of cognitive control, which are rapidly triggered by the processing of particular stimuli or stimulus features. A further aim is to highlight those PC manipulations that allow researchers to dissociate stimulus-driven control from other stimulus-driven processes (e.g., S-R responding; episodic retrieval). We conclude by discussing the utility of PC manipulations for exploring the distinction between voluntary control and stimulus-driven control in other relevant paradigms.

Selective attention and recognition: effects of congruency on episodic learning

“…By this alternative view, the requirement to respond to the word BLUE in red could result in learning that favours processing of the colour dimension relative to the word dimension for that particular item, but not for other items. This idea gained initial support from findings of itemspecific proportion congruency effects in the Stroop task (Jacoby, Lindsay, & Hessels, 2003;see also Blais, Robidoux, Risko, & Besner, 2007;Bugg, Jacoby, & Toth, 2008; for a review see Bugg & Crump, 2012). Jacoby et al (2003) manipulated the relative proportions of congruent and incongruent items separately for different sets of Stroop items.…”

“…One interpretation of sequential congruency effects is that they reflect adaptations in cognitive control processes (Botvinick et al, 2001; but see Hommel, Proctor, & Vu, 2004;Mayr, Awh, & Laurey, 2003 for 4 incongruent trial transitions are more frequent in blocks with a high proportion of incongruent trials, carryover of preparation from one incongruent trial to the next also offers an explanation of proportion congruent effects (smaller congruency effects in blocks with a relatively high proportion of incongruent trials) in Stroop and Stroop-like tasks (Logan & Zbrodoff, 1979;Lowe & Mitterer, 1982;Tzelgov, Henik, & Berger, 1992; for a review see Bugg & Crump, 2012).…”

Contrasting reactive and proactive control of emotional distraction.

“…In other conflict paradigms (e.g., Stroop, flanker tasks), increasing the proportion of conflict trials is thought to engage voluntary and global proactive control mechanisms that are sustained across trials (for a review, see Bugg & Crump, 2012). However, control might also be triggered more locally by the presence of a distractor on a preceding trial through a mechanism of conflict adaptation (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001), which of course occurs more often in the high frequency condition.…”

“…These frequency effects are analogous to those seen in other types of conflict tasks, such as traditional Stroop or flanker tasks, in which the distracting information shares features with the target and so can create response conflict. In such tasks, performance improves when the proportion of conflict trials increases -an effect that has been attributed to increased cognitive control when conflicts are expected (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001;Dishon-Berkovits & Algom, 2000; see reviews in Bugg, 2012;Bugg & Crump, 2012). The Dual Mechanisms of Control (DMC) model (Braver, 2012;Braver, Gray & Burgess, 2007;Braver, Paxton, Locke, & Barch, 2009) provides a useful framework in which to interpret the effect of distractor frequency on cognitive control.…”

Distinctiveness Benefits Novelty (and Not Familiarity), but Only Up to a Limit: The Prior Knowledge Perspective

“…Nouns preceded the adjectives, in accordance with the Hebrew syntax (examples in this manuscript are provided in the reverse order in favor of fluency and compatibility with the English syntax). List-based distinctiveness was parametrically modulated via the proportion of the familiar and novel stimuli in different experimental lists (Icht, Mama, & Algom, 2014; see also list-wise proportion manipulation in attention and semantic priming; Blais, Harris, Sinanian, & Bunge, 2015;Bugg & Crump, 2012;Tweedy, Lapinski, & Schvaneveldt, 1977). A subsequent surprise noun recognition test was utilized to examine memory effects for items encoded with a familiar or a novel adjective.…”