Strategy and processing speed eclipse individual differences in control ability in conflict tasks.
Open Access
- 1 October 2022
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
- Vol. 48 (10), 1448-1469
- https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001028
Abstract
Response control or inhibition is one of the cornerstones of modem cognitive psychology, featuring prominently in theories of executive functioning and impulsive behavior. However, repeated failures to observe correlations between commonly applied tasks have led some theorists to question whether common response conflict processes even exist A challenge to answering this question is that behavior is multifaceted, with both conflict and nonconflict processes (e.g.. strategy, processing spud) contributing to individual differences. Here, we use a cognitive model to dissociate these processes; the diffusion model for conflict tasks (Ulrich et al., 2015). In a meta-analysis of fits to seven empirical datasets containing combinations of the flanker. Simon, color-word Strap, and spatial Stroop tasks, we observed weak (r < .05) zero-order correlations between tasks in parameters reflecting conflict processing. seemingly challenging a general control construct. However. our meta-analysis showed consistent positive correlations in parameters representing processing speed and strategy. We then use model simulations to evaluate whether correlations in behavioral costs are diagnostic of the presence or absence of common mechanisms of conflict processing. We use the model to impose known correlations for conflict mechanisms across tasks, and we compare the simulated behavior to simulations when there is no conflict correlation across tasks. We find that correlations in strategy and processing speed can produce behavioral correlations equal to. or larger than, those produced by correlated conflict mechanisms. We conclude that correlations between conflict tasks arc only weakly informative about common conflict mechanisms if researchers do not control for strategy and processing speed.Funding Information
- Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K002325/1)
- Wellcome Trust (104943/Z/14/Z)
This publication has 97 references indexed in Scilit:
- Antisaccades as decisions: LATER model predicts latency distributions and error responsesEuropean Journal of Neuroscience, 2012
- Associations between trait impulsivity and prepotent response inhibitionJournal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 2012
- Conflict and freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease: support for a response control deficitNeuroscience, 2012
- Diffusion models of the flanker task: Discrete versus gradual attentional selectionCognitive Psychology, 2011
- Insights into the neural basis of response inhibition from cognitive and clinical neuroscienceNeuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2009
- The simplest complete model of choice response time: Linear ballistic accumulationCognitive Psychology, 2008
- Separate conflict-specific cognitive control mechanisms in the human brainNeuroImage, 2007
- Measuring inconsistency in meta-analysesBMJ, 2003
- Conditional and unconditional automaticity: A dual-process model of effects of spatial stimulusesponse correspondence.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1994
- On the ability to inhibit simple and choice reaction time responses: A model and a method.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1984