Conflict Adjustment is Modulated by Conflict Similarity

People receive a large amount of information input every day, and when there is inconsistency in the information, cognitive conflict arises. When this conflict repeatedly occurs, people's ability to resolve conflicts improves, and this phenomenon is called the congruency sequence effect (CSE), which is also commonly referred to as the conflict adaptation effect (CAE).

Currently, there are two main theoretical explanations for the congruency sequence effect. One is the top-down theory, which believes that it reflects the dynamic regulatory function of cognitive control, while the other is the bottom-up theory, which believes that it reflects stimulus-based learning or memory. Both theories can explain the congruency sequence effect produced by a single type of conflict. However, in exploring the CSE between two different types of conflicts (such as Stroop and Simon), researchers have found problems with these two theories. When the consecutive trial involves different conflict types, a cross-category congruency sequence effect cannot be produced, and therefore, researchers consider conflict categories as the boundaries of the congruency sequence effect. In addition, sensory channels, task sets, and even task-independent contextual information can all serve as boundaries for the congruency sequence effect. These findings challenge the existing top-down and bottom-up theories of the congruency sequence effect. On the one hand, the top-down cognitive control theory cannot explain all boundary effects well, as it is unlikely that the brain has so many specific processing loops to handle different conflicts. On the other hand, the bottom-up stimulus-based theory cannot explain the phenomenon that a congruency sequence effect boundary still exists even when the repeated stimuli are excluded.

In recent years, an integrated theory of cognitive control and learning (Abrahams et al., 2016) has emerged, which suggests that cognitive control can also be linked to learning, just like stimuli. This theory can explain the various boundary effects of the congruency sequence effect well, but there is still a lack of direct evidence. One key assumption of the integrated theory of cognitive control and learning is that the magnitude of cross-conflict congruency sequence effects is influenced by the similarity between conflicts, with greater similarity leading to a larger congruency sequence effect. To test this assumption, we manipulated the level of similarity between conflicts through a series of experiments and tested the congruency sequence effects between different types of conflicts using an orthogonal spatial Stroop-Simon task. They also introduced a hybrid conflict (StSm) between Stroop (St) and Simon (Sm), which had a certain degree of similarity to both types of conflicts. The size of the similarity was adjusted by the angle between the arrow and the center (in Experiments 2a and 2b) or the distance between the arrow and the center (in Experiments 3a and 3b).

Figure 1. Experimental design.

Rresults showed that the greater the similarity between conflicts, the greater the CSE between them. Conflict similarity can linearly modulate the size of the CSE. Additionally, the results indicated that the CSE between conflicts is not all-or-none (either significantly larger than 0 or not significant), but rather continuous. These findings provide strong evidence for the integrated cognitive control and learning theory.



Figure 2. Results


Citation: Yang, G., Xu, H., Li, Z., Nan, W., Wu, H., Li, Q., & Liu, X. (2021). The congruency sequence effect is modulated by the similarity of conflicts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(10), 1705-1719. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001054


Reference:
Abrahamse, E., Braem, S., Notebaert, W., & Verguts, T. (2016). Grounding cognitive control in associative learning. Psychological Bulletin, 142(7), 693–728. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000047

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