Measuring adaptive control in conflict tasks

Authors

Braem, S., Bugg, J. M., Schmidt, J. R., Crump, M. J. C., Weissman, D. H., Notebaert, W., Egner, T.

Year

2019

Title

Measuring adaptive control in conflict tasks

Journal / book / conference

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed an explosion of interest in the cognitive and neural mechanisms of adaptive control processes that operate in selective attention tasks. This has spawned a large empirical literature and several theories, but also recurring identification of potential confounds and corresponding adjustments in task design to create confound-minimized metrics of adaptive control. The resultant complexity of this literature can be difficult to navigate for new researchers entering this field, leading to sub-optimal study designs. To remediate this problem, we here present a consensus view among opposing theorists that specifies how researchers can measure four hallmark indices of adaptive control (the congruency sequence effect, and the list-wide, context-specific, and item-specific proportion congruency effects) while minimizing easy-to-overlook confounds.

Issue

Pages

769–783

Keywords

cognitive control, conflict adaptation, executive function, interference effects

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