ORCID

0000-0002-7848-3968

Date of Award

Winter 12-2023

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Author's Department

Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

Learning-guided control refers to adjustments of cognitive control settings (i.e., relatively focused vs. relaxed) based on learned associations between predictive cues (e.g., stimulus features) and the likelihood of conflict. We investigated the transfer of learned control settings beyond the conditions under which they were learned to examine the flexibility and automaticity of these control settings. In Experiment 1, participants experienced an item-specific proportion congruence (ISPC) manipulation in a training phase in which target color in a Flanker task was biased (mostly congruent or mostly incongruent). Then, in a subsequent transfer phase, they performed a color-word Stroop task in which the same target colors were unbiased (i.e., 50% congruent). The same design was implemented in Experiment 2, but the training and transfer tasks were intermixed within the same block. Evidencing between-task transfer, participants in both experiments adjusted the control settings for the unbiased transfer items depending on the proportion congruence (PC) of the predictive cue (i.e., color), as learned in the training task. In Experiment 3, we investigated a farther version of between-task transfer by using different response sets and different relevant dimensions in the training (color-word Stroop) and transfer (produce Stroop) tasks. Despite the stronger boundary between the tasks, we again observed an ISPC effect with the transfer items; although in this case, the between-task transfer effect did not emerge until the second half of the experiment. The results provide converging evidence for the flexibility and automaticity of learning-guided control.

Language

English (en)

Chair and Committee

Julie M. Bugg

Committee Members

Richard A. Abrams, Wouter Kool

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