title: Context-specific control and context selection in conflict tasks.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium. Electronic address: Nathalie.Schouppe@Ugent.be.
authors.forename: Nathalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Schouppe
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: K Richard
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Ridderinkhof
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Verguts
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Belgium.
authors.forename: Wim
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Notebaert
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D057190:Stroop Test; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: 2300; 2340; Avoidance; Context-specific control; Decision-making; Response conflict