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Contingency learning is not affected by con
󿬂
ict experience: Evidencefrom a task con
󿬂
ict-free, item-speci
󿬁
c Stroop paradigm
Yulia Levin
a,
, Joseph Tzelgov
b
a
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
b
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Achva Academic College, Israel
a b s t r a c ta r t i c l e i n f o
 Article history:
Received 12 February 2015Received in revised form 14 December 2015Accepted 15 December 2015Available online xxxx
A contingency learning account of the item-speci
󿬁
c proportion congruent effect has been described as an asso-ciative stimulus
response learning process that has nothing to do with controlling the Stroop con
󿬂
ict. As sup-portive evidence, contingency learning has been demonstrated with
 response con
 󿬂
ict 
-free stimuli, such asneutralwords.However,whatgivesrisetoresponsecon
󿬂
ictandtoStroopinterferenceingeneralis
task con
 󿬂
ict 
.The present study investigated whether task con
󿬂
ict can constitute a trigger or, alternatively, a booster to thecontingency learning process. This was done by employing a
 “
task con
󿬂
ict-free
 condition (i.e., geometricshapes) and comparing it with a
 “
task con
󿬂
ict
 condition (i.e., neutral words). The results showed a signi
󿬁
cantcontingency learning effect in both conditions, refuting the possibility that contingency learning is triggered bythepresenceof ataskcon
󿬂
ict. Contingencylearningwasalsonotenhancedbythetaskcon
󿬂
ict experience,indi-catingitscompleteinsensitivitytoStroopcon
󿬂
ict(s).Thus,theresultsshowednoevidencethatperformanceop-timization asa resultof contingency learning isgreater undercon
󿬂
ict,implying that contingency learning isnotrecruited to assist the control system to overcome con
󿬂
ict.© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Automaticity of readingItem-speci
󿬁
c proportion congruent effectInformational con
󿬂
ictTask con
󿬂
ictContingency learningCognitive control
1. Introduction
Readingis anacquired human ability to decode and interpret visuallexicalsymbols.Inadults,thisabilityisknowntobeautomatic,thatis,itoccurs whenever a lexical stimulus is encountered. The most dramaticdemonstration of the automaticity of the reading process is an
 interfer-enceeffect 
obtainedintheStrooptask(Stroop,1935).Inthistask,partic-ipantshavetonamethecolorofvisuallypresentedwords(e.g.,blueforthe stimulus RED presented in blue ink) while ignoring their meaning(e.g., the word RED). There is no need to read the words to accomplishthetask and yet readingoccurs, asevidenced by slower response timesfor incongruent stimuli (e.g., RED in blue ink) than for neutral letterstrings (e.g., XXXX in blue ink). The fact that reading takes place inspite of the fact that it is not required, and even interferes with perfor-mance, demonstrates its automaticity (Perlman & Tzelgov, 2006).The interference, or con
󿬂
ict, produced by the automatic perfor-mance of the irrelevant reading task has been shown to be a target of cognitivecontrol.Thatis,whenacon
󿬂
ictbecomestoostrong,cognitivecontrol is able to reduce it. Much evidence for that ability of the cogni-tive system came from a bulk of studies that manipulated the propor-tion of congruent vs. incongruent stimuli to control the Stroop effect(e.g. Logan, 1985; Logan & Zbrodoff, 1979). The main
 󿬁
nding of thesestudies, or what is known as the
 “
list-wide proportion-congruent ef-fect
, was that the magnitude of the observed interference effect wassmallerwhentheexperiencedcon
󿬂
ictwastoostrong(i.e.,largepropor-tion of incongruent trials in the list).Several models have been proposed to explain the mechanism bywhich con
󿬂
ict is reduced in the Stroop task (a con
󿬂
󿬂
ict-monitoring architecture, increasingthe proportion of incongruent trials raises the amount of (response)con
󿬂
ict (i.e., stronger competition between the response activated bythecolor-namingprocessandtheirrelevantresponseactivatedbyread-ing). The elevation in con
󿬂
ict is detected by the con
󿬂
ict-monitoringunit, which in turn signals units responsible for control exertion. Thecontrol is achieved through focusing attention on the relevant task.This way the irrelevant reading task does not get much attention andthe con
󿬂
ict it produces is considerably reduced.It has also been proposed that the control system is not just able toreduce the con
󿬂
ict accumulated at the list level, but is also
 󿬂
exibleenough to reduce the con
󿬂
ict produced by speci
󿬁
 
item-speci
󿬁
c proportion-congruent
 effect( Jacoby, Lindsay, & Hessels, 2003; Jacoby, McElree, & Trainham, 1999)demonstrates that when the proportion of incongruent stimuli is
 Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of theNegev, P.O.B. 653, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel.
E-mail address:
 levinyu@post.bgu.ac.il (Y. Levin).http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.12.0090001-6918/© 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Acta Psychologica
 
manipulated at the level of speci
󿬁
c words, the words mostly presentedas incongruent stimuli tend to produce less interference than thosemostly presented as congruent stimuli.
1.1. Cognitive control, learning and what is in between
Theprocessofcognitivecontrolisassumedtoproceedinawaythatcan be described as
 “
automatic
, that is, without assuming any hiddenagency deciding when, where and how to intervene. As such, for thelast couple of decades there has been some tension in this research
󿬁
eldtodifferentiatebetweenthe
automaticcontrol
andsimplelearn-ing mechanisms, or to de
󿬁
ne how much the former may be relying onthe latter.According to the proposal of  Verguts and Notebaert (2008, 2009), asimple learning process may be in fact
 “
in service of control
. Speci
󿬁
-cally, their proposal holds that the goal of control (i.e., con
󿬂
ict reduc-tion) can be achieved through associative (Hebbian) learning thatbinds together all currently active (i.e., task-relevant) representations.Thatis,accordingtothisaccountthecontrolisactuallybasedonalearn-ingprocess.Itisimportantforthepresentdiscussiontonotethatexceptfor extending the general con
󿬂
ict-monitoring theory (Botvinick et al.,2001,2004)byexplaininghowthesystemknows
where
tointervene,itsharesmostofitsotherfeatures.Thus,whenthecon
󿬂
ictissuf 
󿬁
cientlyreduced, less learning occurs, which means learning in this situation isdependentonandguidedbythemagnitudeoftheexperiencedcon
󿬂
ict.In contrast, there are suggestions that learning does not represent amechanism
 “
in-service-of control
, but separate cognitive phenomenathat sometimes might
 “
mimic
 the effects of control. That is, learningisassumedtoproduceanindependent(confounding)effectonreactiontime(RT)thathappenstolookliketheeffectofcon
󿬂
ictreductionattrib-uted to cognitive control. In the context of the Stroop task, Schmidt,Crump, Cheesman, and Besner (2007) proposed that the item-speci
󿬁
cproportion-congruent effect might be driven by such learning that hasnothing to do with (controlling the) con
󿬂
ict. This
 contingency learning 
account of the item-speci
󿬁
c proportion-congruent effect is based onthe fact that in the original study of  Jacoby et al.'s (2003), as well as inthe recent replications (Hazeltine & Mordkoff, 2014), faster responseswere also observed for congruent items in a mostly congruent condi-tion, as compared to the condition where the probability of an itemappearing in a congruent or incongruent color was equal.
1
This resultcannotbeaccounted forbyassumingtheinterventionofcognitivecon-trol,sincecongruentitemsdonotproduceresponsecon
󿬂
ict,andthere-fore are not able to engage control (see also Levin & Tzelgov, 2014).According to the
 contingency learning 
󿬁
cproportion-congruenteffectisbet-ter described as a speeding-up observed for the words frequentlyappearing in a speci
󿬁
c (be it congruent or incongruent) color, and isduetothefactthatmanipulationofproportionsattheitemlevelcreatescontingencies between speci
󿬁
c words andresponses. Thesecontingen-cies are learned and subsequently used to predictresponses. For exam-ple,ifREDfrequentlyappearsinblueink,thelearnedassociationwouldbe
 “
if the word is RED then push the
 ‘
blue
 button
. Note, in contrast tothe learning-based control view (Verguts & Notebaert, 2008, 2009),contingency learning is not assumed to be aided by response con
󿬂
ict,but rather to represent a general ability to bind stimuli and responseson the basis of their existing correlations. The mechanism of contin-gency learning as implemented in the parallel-episodic processingmodel (Schmidt, 2013a) has no feature that is able to measure the re-sponsecon
󿬂
ict,norhasitapropertyallowingforallocationofattentionin an adaptive manner, and yet it successfully simulates the pattern of the item-speci
󿬁
c proportion-congruent effect.However, according to recently reported data, which will bediscussed shortly, there might be a third type of control
learning rela-tionshipthatcomesrightinbetweenthetwoaforementionedproposalsand which is at the focus of the present study. Recent studies showedthat implicit learning processes might not be completely independentof con
󿬂
ict as suggested by Schmidt et al. (2007) for contingency learn-ing. However, the way they depend on con
󿬂
ict does not
 󿬁
t thelearning-based control put forward by Verguts and Notebaert (2008,2009) (i.e., con
󿬂
ict-monitoring framework) either. Deroost,Vandenbossche, Zeischka, Coomans, and Soetens (2012) presented aprobabilistic sequence of the colors in the Stroop task, which was im-plicitly learned by the participants. They found that sequence learningdidnothelptoreducethecon
󿬂
ict(i.e.,theStroopeffect).Stroopcon
󿬂
icthowever, was shown to enhance the expression
2
of learning: the ac-quired sequence knowledge was used more under con
󿬂
ict(i.e., incongruent) conditions than under con
󿬂
ict-free (i.e., congruentand neutral) conditions. Boostingeffects of con
󿬂
ict on implicit learninghave also been reported in other studies. Deroost and Soetens (2006)observed a larger sequence learning effect for participants who weretrained with incompatible (i.e., con
󿬂
icting) than compatible stimulus
response mappings. Similarly, Zhao, Ngo, McKendrick, and Turk-Browne (2011) found that engaging in a secondary (i.e., interfering)taskduringthetrainingphase,asopposedtopassiveviewing,improvedstatistical learning. Finally, Vandenbossche, Coomans, Homble, andDeroost (2014) reported a larger sequence learning effect for agedadults under high-interference (i.e., a dual task performed in the samemodality) than under low-interference (i.e., a cross-modal dual task)training condition.To summarize, the implicit sequence learning was not found
 
toserve control
 by
 reducing the con
 󿬂
ict 
 (Deroost et al., 2012) as assumedfor learning-based control (Verguts & Notebaert, 2008, 2009). Yet, theobserved enhancement and stronger reliance on implicit learning incon
󿬂
ict environments (Vandenbossche et al., 2014; Zhao et al., 2011;seealsoDeroost&Soetens,2006;Koch,2007,Exp.1)speaksforthepos-sibilitythatimplicitlearningprocessesmightneverthelesscontributetocognitive control. However, this may happen not by reducing the con-
󿬂
ict but according to Deroost et al. (2012), through
 optimization of thetaskperformance
:
Optimizationoftaskperformancewasaccomplishedby an increased reliance on implicit sequence knowledge under highcon
󿬂
ict.Thisindicatesthatimplicitlearningprocessescanbe
󿬂
exiblyre-cruitedtosupportcognitivecontrol
(p.15).Thisideamightseemnovelin the domain of cognitive control, since the latter is traditionally de-scribed as the process that is sensitive to the amount of con
󿬂
ict andthat aims to minimize this con
󿬂
ict when it gets too strong. However,considering the control process more broadly makes it is perfectlyclear that the reduction of the con
󿬂
ict is only needed to ensure a goodlevel of performance in the ongoing task. Stated otherwise, the
 󿬁
nalgoal of the control process is to protect the performance from thecon
󿬂
ict-relateddecline.Bugg's(2014)studyprovidesempiricalsupportfor such a view of cognitive control. It was shown in a series of experi-ments that in a high-con
󿬂
ict context, cognitive control was only en-gaged as a
 “
last resource
, when stimulus
response associations didnot allow maintaining a suf 
󿬁
cient level of performance. Thus, the mag-nitudeofthecon
󿬂
ictseemsonlytomatterwhenithasadetrimentalef-fect on performance. This emphasizes the importance of theperformance rather than con
󿬂
ict per se in the context of controlengagement.Onewaytopreservetherequiredperformancewhencon
󿬂
ictarises,as suggested by the con
󿬂
ict-monitoring theory, is by reducing the
1
A 50/50 condition in Jacoby et al.'s (2003) study.
2
As opposed to
 acquisition
 of learning that was not affected by the amount of con
󿬂
ict(manipulated by the proportion of congruent trials) at the training phase.40
 Y. Levin, J. Tzelgov / Acta Psychologica 164 (2016) 39
45
 
con
󿬂
ict.Thisisobviouslythemostef 
󿬁
cientwaythatsolvestheproblemfrom the root
if you want to protect the performance from interfer-ence, eliminate the cause of the interference. However, as the resultsof the aforementioned studies suggest, there might be another way to
assist
 maintaining good performance in the face of con
󿬂
ict, namely,recruitment of the implicit learning processes and stronger reliance onwhat was learned by these processes. For example, learning what but-ton should be pushed when the word that appears is
 
red
(i.e., contingency learning) allows shortening the time that is neededto respond, thus promoting better performance. Such performance-boosting learning seems to be especially useful when performance hasbeen damaged by con
󿬂
ict. That is, it is conceivable that in con
󿬂
ict situ-ations,thecontrolsystem,alongwithitsattemptstoreducethecon
󿬂
ict,might also engage/enhance such an implicit learning process that mayhelp to maintain performance in a faster and resource-saving way.
1.2. Possible contribution of the contingency learning to cognitive control
RegardingStroopcontingencylearning,ithasbeenclaimedthatthislearning process does not represent learning-based control (as pro-posed by Verguts & Notebaert, 2008, 2009). This claim was supportedby empirical data demonstrating a contingency learning effect withneutral color-unrelated words (Schmidt et al., 2007). By showing thatthe effect of contingency learning was observable even when the con-gruency variable was not manipulated, the authors claimed that it hadto be regarded as an independent process that had nothing to do withcontrol.Oneof theaims of thecurrentstudyistocompletetheattemptofSchmidtetal.todisregardcontingencylearningasamechanismcon-tributing to cognitive control. Whereas Schmidt et al. only consideredone way in which learning might contribute to control
the way sug-gested by Verguts and Notebaert
we suggest that there is another op-tion that should be considered as well. Speci
󿬁
cally, we investigatedwhether contingency learning in the Stroop task might represent the
assisting
 type of the control
learning relationship, where the contin-gency learning is recruited not to reduce the con
󿬂
ict, but to help thecontrol system optimize performance (Deroost et al., 2012) in some of the trials.What gives rise to the latter possibility is a notion of the multiple-con
󿬂
ict nature of Stroop interference. Using neutral words in Schmidtet al.'s (2007) and Schmidt and Besner's (2008) experiments did not eliminate the Stroop con
󿬂
ict completely. This is because response con-
󿬂
ict is not the only con
󿬂
ict known to contribute to Stroop interference(Goldfarb & Henik, 2007; MacLeod & MacDonald, 2000; for contrastingviews see Melara & Algom, 2003). In fact, response con
󿬂
ict is a directoutcomeoftheparallelactivationoftwocolorconceptsinthesemanticnetwork, which is frequently referred to as the
 informational con
 󿬂
ict 
3
Theactivationofonecolorconceptrepresentstheretrievaloftheword'smeaningasaresultofthereadingprocess,whereastheactivationofthesecondcolorconceptrepresentsprocessingofthecoloroftheinkthewordiswrittenin.Note,however,thatevenwhenthereadingdoesnotresultinactiva-tion of the irrelevant color concept, for example, when color-unrelatedstimuli such as neutral words (e.g., DOG) or letter strings (e.g., LGFD/XXXX) are used, the interference effect, though of smaller magnitude,is still observed (Brown, 2011; Klein, 1964; Sharma & McKenna,1998). This fact indicates that the
 main
 origin of Stroop interference isnot an informational incompatibility that leads eventually to theresponse con
󿬂
ict, but a competition between two possible tasks thatone can perform when the stimulus has lexical properties
reading,which is automatically activated while not being a part of the task re-quirement (Tzelgov, 1997), and the color-naming task.
4
The competi-tion between the two tasks has been conceptualized by MacLeod andMacDonald (2000) as well as by Goldfarb and Henik (2007) to be the
task con
 󿬂
ict 
, the existence of which has been well-documented by be-havioral (Entel, Tzelgov, Bereby-Meyer, & Shahar, 2014; Kalanthroff,Goldfarb, & Henik, 2013) as well as neuroimaging data (Bench et al.,1993; see also Aarts, Roelofs, & van Turennout, 2009; Steinhauser &Hübner, 2009).Asevidentfromthisdiscussion,interferenceduetotaskcon
󿬂
ictcanbeobtainedaslongasthestimuluscanberead,regardlessofwhetheritis related to color or not (for an analysis further delineating the contri-bution of each type of con
󿬂
ict to the Stroop effect see Levin & Tzelgov,2015). Hence, using color-unrelated words in Schmidt and Besner's(2008)andSchmidtetal.'s(2007)studieseliminatedtheresponsecon-
󿬂
ict but not the main component of the Stroop interference
the taskcon
󿬂
ict that was experienced by the participants in every trial. There-fore, in this experiment the contingency learning effect was only ob-served under a con
󿬂
ict condition. This raises a question whetherconstant presence of the task con
󿬂
ict in Schmidt and Besner's andSchmidtetal.'sexperimentscouldenhance(oreventrigger)thecontin-gencylearningprocessin order to optimizeperformance by facilitatingthe RTs on some of the trials. Answering this question and refuting thepossibilitythatcontingencylearningmaybeinvolvedin
assisting
con-trolbyoptimizingperformancerequiresevidencethatitcanalsobeob-served in a Stroop situation where no task con
󿬂
ict is produced by thestimuli.Tothatend,inoneconditionweemployedanitem-speci
󿬁
cpar-adigm with stimuli that could not be read (i.e., geometric shapes), andthe second condition was identical to that used by Schmidt et al.(2007) and used neutral words as stimuli. Comparing the performancein these conditions would allow
 󿬁
rst, to test whether contingencylearning is triggered
5
by con
󿬂
ict experience. If that is the case, weshould not expect to observe the contingency learning effect in theshapescondition,butonlyinthewordscondition.Second,ifthecontin-gency learning effect is observed with shapes stimuli, it is possible totest whether its effect, as has been shown for other implicit learningprocesses, is boosted by the con
󿬂
ict experience. The latter would ex-press itself in a larger contingency learning effect under a task con
󿬂
ict(i.e., neutral words) condition. Results supportive of at least one of thesehypotheses would indicatethatcontingency learningis recruitedas a performance-optimizing tool assisting the control system to over-come con
󿬂
ict.
2. Method
 2.1. Participants
Forty-two undergraduate students at Ben-Gurion University of theNegev (25 females and 17 males, mean age = 25 years old,
 SD
 = 2.3),who were native speakers of Hebrew, participated in the experimentand were paid 25 NIS. All participants reported having normal orcorrected-to-normal vision acuity, as well as normal color vision. No
3
NotethatinatypicalStroopexperiment,eachcolorconceptrequiresadifferentvocalresponse, so in such experiments, response con
󿬂
ict and informational con
󿬂
ict are con-founded (but for a manual response design allowing decoupling of this confound see DeHouwer,2003).Thus,inthepresentarticlewedonotdistinguishbetweenthesetwotypesof con
󿬂
ict and when mentioning
 “
response con
󿬂
ict
 we refer to both the informationaland response con
󿬂
icts.
4
Note,by
mainorigin
wedonotmeanthetaskcon
󿬂
ictcontributesmostoftheStroopeffectinaclassiccolor-wordtask,butthatithasakeyroleininitiationoftheinterference.Simply put, withoutengagingintheirrelevantreading task, therewould benoStroopin-terference no matter what stimulus type (incongruent/neutral word) is used.
5
Basedontheresultsof Deroostetal. (2012)showing that con
󿬂
ict onlyaffects theex-pressionbutnottheacquisitionoflearning,webelievethatthe
triggering
isalesslikelyscenario than the
enhancement
.However,sincewe use anotherparadigmthan theoneusedoriginallybyDeroostetal.,itwouldnotbeexperimentallycorrectnottoconsiderthispossibility as well.41
Y. Levin, J. Tzelgov / Acta Psychologica 164 (2016) 39
45

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