Response as a Boundary for Item-Specific Control
Creators: name: Wetz, Logan
name: Colvett, Jackson
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: Cognitive Psychology
subject: Cognition and Perception
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences

description: Goals When people respond to picture-word Stroop stimuli, people are capable of learning about an association between a stimulus feature and a relaxed or focused attentional control setting. Participants retrieve these control settings upon encountering the stimulus feature again. When participants retrieve a relaxed control setting for a stimulus feature that predicts low distraction and focused control setting for a stimulus feature that predicts high distraction, we observe ISPC effects (i.e., a larger congruency effect for MC items compared to MI items). Notably, this effect has been robustly shown to transfer to new stimuli that also show the ISPC effect. This effect has been robustly shown to occur despite several boundaries separating the inducer trials where the ISPC effect was learned from the diagnostic trials where transfer tested. These boundaries include the type of task used in the inducer phase and diagnostic phase (Ileri Tayar et al., 2022), the specific responses used for inducer trials and diagnostic trials (Ileri Tayar et al., in prep), and the degree to which inducer stimuli and diagnostic stimuli are typical category members (Bugg &amp; Dey 2018; Cochrane &amp; Pratt, 2022). The primary theoretical account of the ISPC (Crump et al., 2009) states that so long the stimulus feature is present for inducer and diagnostic trials, transfer should occur. However, transfer has never been observed when inducer and diagnostic trials use different response modalities. Response modality may serve as a strong boundary for transfer, as a participant using different types of response for inducer trials and diagnostic trials may serve as a powerful signal that those trials are distinct from each other. The main experiment will consist of two phases. The first phase (i.e., manual response inducer phase) will require manual keypress responses and will use MC and MI items. This phase will consist of three 240 trial blocks. The second phase (i.e., vocal response diagnostic phase) will use the exact same stimuli, but they will now require verbal responses. Regardless of whether response modality serves as a boundary for ISPC transfer, we expect to observe a significant ISPC effect in the manual response inducer blocks. If response modality serves a boundary for ISPC transfer, we should not observe a significant ISPC effect in the vocal response diagnostic block. If ISPC transfer is robust against changes in response modality, we should observe a significant ISPC effect in the vocal response diagnostic block. Method Sample Size We will collect at least 96 participants that meet our inclusion criteria. This study is being done in response to a pilot study that found a null result (i.e., no transfer to the diagnostic block using the vocal response), though there are reasons to believe that previous study was potentially underpowered. A relevant comparison study assessed ISPC transfer to an unbiased diagnostic phase using the same response modality (Bustos et al., in prep). They used 106 participants, and a power analysis suggests that 36 participants is sufficient at .9 power and an alpha of .05. We wanted to run more participants due to the theoretically relevant null effect and the added boundary of changing response modalities from manual in the inducer phase to vocal in the transfer phase. Participants will range from 18-25 years of age and will earn course credit as a requirement for psychology courses. Participants will be native English speakers and report that they have normal or corrected-to-normal vision. All participants will provide informed consent. Design and materials We used animal-picture word stimuli from Bugg et al. (2011). Trials are congruent when the identity of the animal picture matches the overlaid word (e.g., an image of a dog with the word “DOG” superimposed over it), and trials are incongruent when the identity of the animal picture mismatches the overlaid word (e.g., an image of a dog with word “CAT”, “BIRD”, or “FISH” superimposed over it). Participants will be instructed to name the identity of the picture as quickly as possible without making too many errors. Four categories of animal pictures (i.e., dog, cat, fish, bird) and their corresponding animal-words will be used throughout the experiment. Each animal category was comprised of two distinct exemplars. The items were divided into two sets, with one set (e.g., dog and fish) presented as mostly congruent (MC) and the other set (e.g., cat and bird) presented as mostly incongruent (MI). Whether an animal picture was MC or MI was counterbalanced across participants. The main experiment consisted of two phases. The first phase (i.e., manual response inducer phase) required manual keypresses to respond. In this phase, we will use a 2 (Proportion Congruence: Mostly Congruent vs. Mostly Incongruent) x 2 (Trial Type: Congruent vs Incongruent) repeated measures (within-subjects) design. The pictures in the MC set were 90% congruent (i.e., presented with the congruent word 90% of the time and presented with one of the three incongruent words 10% of the time) and the pictures in the MI set were 10% congruent (i.e., presented with the congruent word 10% of the time and presented with one of the three incongruent words 90% of the time). This came out to a total of four training items and 4 transfer items for each category (e.g., two pictures of dogs with each picture having a possibility of the word “DOG,” “CAT,” “FISH,” or “BIRD” presented centrally). This phase will consist of three inducer blocks, and each block will consist of 240 trials. The second phase (i.e., vocal response diagnostic phase) required vocal responses using a microphone to respond. For the diagnostic vocal response block, we will use a 2 (Proportion Congruence: Mostly Congruent vs. Mostly Incongruent) x 2 (Trial Type: Congruent vs. Incongruent) repeated-measures design. The transfer block will consist of the same stimuli used in the inducer blocks, but now all stimuli will be 50% congruent. The diagnostic vocal response block will consist of 192 trials. Procedure Participants will complete the study using their own computer with a working microphone. The experiment was built using Inquisit and ran using Millisecond. The experiment will begin with training blocks to ensure that the microphone worked, that participants learned the key-response mapping for manual responses, and that participants responded to the picture not the word for picture-word Stroop stimuli. Participants were instructed to complete the study using a windows computer, due to an issue getting accurate measurements with Apple computers. Any participants who use an Apple computer will be removed from the analysis. All stimuli will be presented on a white background. An animal picture (dog, cat, fish, bird) will be presented at the center of the screen with one of four animal-words (“DOG,” “CAT,” “FISH,” “BIRD”) superimposed. Participants will be instructed to name the picture of the animal while ignoring the word superimposed over the picture as quickly and accurately as possible. The image and superimposed word will be presented on screen until a response is made. Exclusion Criteria We will only analyze participants with an error rate lower than 30% in both the manual response inducer blocks and the vocal response diagnostic block. We will only analyze participants who used windows computers to complete the experiment. We will analyze reaction time and error rate separately. For all analyses, we will remove responses that are faster than 200 ms and slower than 3000 ms. For vocal responses, we will remove all trials that the microphone could not identify a response. For analyses of reaction time, we will only analyze correct responses. Planned Analyses For each of the following analyses, we will run a 2 x 2 repeated measures ANOVA with factors of proportion congruence (MC or MI) and trial type (congruent or incongruent). We will analyze the inducer manual response blocks separately from the diagnostic vocal response blocks. For the inducer manual response blocks, we will run a 2 x 2 repeated measures ANOVA separately for both reaction time and error rate. For the diagnostic vocal response blocks, we will run a 2 x 2 repeated measures ANOVA separately for both reaction time and error rate. Theoretically, transfer to the vocal response diagnostic block should only occur if participants learn the difference between MC and MI items in the manual response inducer block. As done in Ileri Tayar et al. (2022), we plan to separately analyze performance in the vocal response diagnostic blocks for participants who show a positive ISPC effect (i.e., greater than or equal to 1 ms) in the manual response inducer blocks. Exploratory Analyses We additionally plan to analyze performance separately in each of the three manual response inducer blocks. As an exploratory analysis, we will also run a 3 x 2 x 2 repeated-measures ANOVA with factor of block (1, 2, or 3), proportion congruence (MC or MI) and trial type (congruent or incongruent). For performance in the vocal response diagnostic blocks, we also expect effects to be strongest early in the diagnostic block directly after the biased inducer block. As a planned exploratory analysis, we will separately analyze performance in the first and second half of the diagnostic block, as well as for the first, second, third, and fourth quarters of the diagnostic block.