Context-specific control and context selection in conflict tasks

This study investigated whether participants prefer contexts with relatively little cognitive conflict and whether this preference is related to context-specific control. A conflict selection task was administered in which participants had to choose between two categories that contained different le...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Acta psychologica 2014-02, Vol.146, p.63-66
Main Authors: Schouppe, Nathalie, Ridderinkhof, K. Richard, Verguts, Tom, Notebaert, Wim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Attention - physiology
Avoidance
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition. Intelligence
Conflict (Psychology)
Context-specific control
Decision Making - physiology
Decision making. Choice
Decision-making
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction Time - physiology
Response conflict
Stroop Test
Young Adult
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Summary:This study investigated whether participants prefer contexts with relatively little cognitive conflict and whether this preference is related to context-specific control. A conflict selection task was administered in which participants had to choose between two categories that contained different levels of conflict. One category was associated with 80% congruent Stroop trials and 20% incongruent Stroop trials, while the other category was associated with only 20% congruent Stroop trials and 80% incongruent Stroop trials. As predicted, participants selected the low-conflict category more frequently, indicating that participants avoid contexts with high-conflict likelihood. Furthermore, we predicted a correlation between this preference for the low-conflict category and the control implementation associated with the categories (i.e., context-specific proportion congruency effect, CSPC effect). Results however did not show such a correlation, thereby failing to support a relationship between context control and context selection. •Stroop effect was smaller in the low-conflict compared to the high-conflict context.•Choice results indicated a robust preference for the low-conflict context.•This low-conflict preference did not relate to context-specific control.
ISSN:0001-6918
1873-6297
DOI:10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.11.010