Transfer of location-specific control to untrained locations

Abstract

Recent research highlights a seemingly flexible and automatic form of cognitive control that is triggered by potent contextual cues, as exemplified by the location-specific proportion congruence effect--reduced compatibility effects in locations associated with a high as compared to low likelihood of conflict. We investigated just how flexible location-specific control is by examining whether novel locations effectively cue control for congruency-unbiased stimuli. In two experiments, biased (mostly compatible or mostly incompatible) training stimuli appeared in distinct locations. During a final block, unbiased (50% compatible) stimuli appeared in novel untrained locations spatially linked to biased locations. The flanker compatibly effect was reduced for unbiased stimuli in novel locations linked to a mostly incompatible compared to a mostly compatible location, indicating transfer. Transfer was observed when stimuli appeared along a linear function (Experiment 1) or in rings of a bullseye (Experiment 2). The novel transfer effects imply that location-specific control is more flexible than previously reported and further counter the complex stimulus–response learning account of location-specific proportion congruence effects. We propose that the representation and retrieval of control settings in untrained locations may depend on environmental support and the presentation of stimuli in novel locations that fall within the same categories of space as trained locations.

Keywords:

• Cognitive control
• Context-specific proportion congruency effect
• Location-specific control
• Transfer
• Flanker

Notes

¹We do not intend to imply that learning is explicit (see Crump et al., 2006, for evidence to the contrary).

²In Experiment 1 we aimed to collect data from 28 participants (approximating Crump & Milliken's, 2009, Experiment 2, sample size). We then roughly doubled the sample size for Experiment 2 because we expected smaller effects with the increased number of locations to learn during training and/or transfer. Participant sign-ups by the end of the data collection period dictated the final sample size for both experiments.

³Due to a programming error, for a subset of participants (n = 6) one stimulus during each of the three training blocks was presented in the wrong location. That trial is excluded from the analyses presented. Note that exclusion of those participants from the analyses did not change the patterns or statistical reliability of the LSPC and transfer effects.

⁴One potential objection to such an account is that the 50% compatible location presented at fixation did not reveal a compatibility effect that was intermediate to that of the outer MC and MI locations (see Table 1). However, caution is needed when comparing compatibility effects from the central, 50% compatible location to the MC and MI locations. Stimuli in the central, 50% compatible location were presented at fixation, and therefore eye movements were not necessary (whereas the eyes were required to travel identical distances to the MC and MI locations). Indeed, Corballis and Gratton (2003) found a similar pattern of reduced compatibility effects for the 50% compatible location at fixation (compared to the congruency-biased locations to the left or right) and excluded the 50% compatible trials from some of their analyses. Following on their work, we elected to use the central 50% location as an anchor point to facilitate learning of the function and did not expect it to inform our interpretation of the coding system that supported transfer.

⁵We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this possibility.

⁶A similar category of effects, known as item-specific proportion congruence (ISPC) effects, have been suggested to reflect “automatic control” (Jacoby, Lindsay, & Hessels, 2003). Location-specific control may similarly be automatic in the sense that retrieval of the appropriate settings for a given location does not appear intentional (strategic) given the rapidity with which it occurs and participants’ lack awareness of the PC of particular locations (e.g., Crump et al., 2006).

⁷More specifically, a transfer item in the outer ring was an average 29.0 E-prime units from the training items within the outer ring and 31.2 units from the training locations in the inner ring; a difference unlikely to be noticed by participants (for comparison the inner transfer items were an average of 7.0 units from the inner ring biased items).