Rethinking attentional reset: Task sets determine the boundaries of adaptive control

Abstract

Adaptive control processes that minimise distraction often operate in a context-specific manner. For example, they may minimise distraction from irrelevant conversations during a lecture but not in the hallway afterwards. It remains unclear, however, whether (a) salient perceptual features or (b) task sets based on such features serve as contextual boundaries for adaptive control in standard distractor-interference tasks. To distinguish between these possibilities, we manipulated whether the structure of a standard, visual distractor-interference task allowed (Experiment 1) or did not allow (Experiment 2) participants to associate salient visual features (i.e., colour patches and colour words) with different task sets. We found that changing salient visual features across consecutive trials reduced a popular measure of adaptive control in distractor-interference tasks-the congruency sequence effect (CSE)-only when the task structure allowed participants to associate these visual features with different task sets. These findings extend prior support for the task set hypothesis from somewhat atypical cross-modal tasks to a standard unimodal task. In contrast, they pose a challenge to an alternative "attentional reset" hypothesis, and related views, wherein changing salient perceptual features always results in a contextual boundary for the CSE.

Keywords: Cognitive control; conflict adaptation; task set.

Figure 1.

The prime-probe task in Experiment 1. This figure illustrates two sequential trials: an incongruent trial with colour word stimuli followed by a congruent trial with colour patch stimuli. The number beneath each box indicates the length of the corresponding trial component in milliseconds (ms). The arrow indicates the passage of time.

Figure 2.

The congruency sequence effect (CSE) in each of the two critical trial types of Experiment 1: format repeat trials and format switch trials. Previous trial congruency varies on the x-axis (Prev Cong: previous congruent trial; Prev Incong: previous incongruent trial). Current trial congruency varies with line type (dashed line: incongruent; black line: congruent). Reaction time (in ms) appears on the y-axis. Error bars indicate ± 1 standard error of the mean.

Figure 3.

The CSE in each of the four possible combinations of format transition (repeat, switch) and previous trial stimulus format (colour word, colour patch) in Experiment 1. Format transition varies on the x-axis. Previous trial format varies by line type. CSE Magnitude (in ms) appears on the y-axis. Error bars indicate ± 1 standard error of the mean.

Figure 4.

The congruency sequence effect (CSE) in each of the four possible combinations of distractor format transition (repeat, switch) and target format transition (repeat, switch) in Experiment 2. Previous trial congruency varies on the x-axis (Prev Cong: previous congruent trial; Prev Incong: previous incongruent trial). Current trial congruency varies by line type (Dashed line: incongruent; Black line: congruent). Reaction time (in ms) appears on the y-axis. Error bars indicate ± 1 standard error of the mean.

Figure 5.

Across-experiment analysis. Whether the format of the distractor and target both repeated or both switched varies on the x-axis, separately for Experiment 1 (dotted line) and Experiment 2 (dashed line). The y-axis plots CSE magnitude (in ms) in each of these four conditions.