Research Information System
Experimental Psychology, vol.70, no.5, pp.294-306, 2023 (SSCI, Scopus)
In this study, with three Stroop task experiments, we investigated simultaneous engagement of list-wide and item-specific control mechanisms and their potential interaction. By using list-wide proportion congruency (LWPC), item-specific proportion congruency (ISPC)-transfer, and unbiased-Transfer sets that weremade up of distinct color-word pairings, we were able to observe both LWPC and ISPC effects. By comparing the LWPC effects that were observed with the ISPC-Transfer sets and the unbiased-Transfer sets, we investigated the relationship between item-specific control and list-wide control. By comparing the findings from Experiments 1 and 2 with the findings of Experiment 3, we observed the possible mediating role of contingency learning in the ISPC-Transfer sets on the generalizability of list-wide control. Across all experiments, we consistently observed item-specific control, with the ISPC effect. Although we did not find evidence for list-wide control in the first two experiments, in the third experiment, where color-word contingency learning was minimal for ISPC-Transfer items, we observed a significant LWPC effect. Our findings indicate that the introduction of contingency learning in the ISPC-Transfer items may reduce top-down control. Importantly, none of the experiments revealed an interaction between item-specific control and list-wide control, suggesting that these two control mechanisms operated independently.