Measuring Adaptive Control in Conflict Tasks

Publication date: Available online 19 July 2019Source: Trends in Cognitive SciencesAuthor(s): Senne Braem, Julie M. Bugg, James R. Schmidt, Matthew J.C. Crump, Daniel H. Weissman, Wim Notebaert, Tobias EgnerThe 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 not only a large empirical literature and several theories but also the recurring identification of potential confounds and corresponding adjustments in task design to create confound-minimized metrics of adaptive control. The resulting complexity of this literature can be difficult to navigate for new researchers entering the field, leading to suboptimal study designs. To remediate this problem, we present here a consensus view among opposing theorists that specifies how researchers can measure four hallmark indices of adaptive control (the congruency sequence effect, and list-wide, context-specific, and item-specific proportion congruency effects) while minimizing easy-to-overlook confounds.

Source: Trends in Cognitive Sciences - July 20, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research