On the automaticity of reactive item-specific control as evidenced by its efficiency under load

Abstract

Traditionally cognitive control is described as slow-acting, effortful, and strategic. Against this backdrop, the notion of "automatic control" is an oxymoron. However, recent findings indicate control also operates quickly with adjustments occurring outside awareness, leaving open the possibility that control could be automatic under certain conditions. Harnessing one such finding, the item-specific proportion congruent (ISPC) effect (i.e., reduction in congruency effect for mostly incongruent compared with mostly congruent items), we systematically investigated the automaticity of reactive item-specific control by examining its efficiency under a concurrent load. In four experiments using a picture-word Stroop task, participants first performed a block of trials in which an ISPC manipulation was embedded to acquire the item-control associations. In later blocks, we manipulated working memory load within-subjects (verbal in Experiment 1, visuospatial in Experiment 2, and n-back updating in Experiments 3 and 4) and compared the ISPC effect between low- and high-load conditions. The results of all four experiments showed that the ISPC effect was robust regardless of working memory load. In Experiment 4, we additionally included diagnostic items to assess whether transfer of item-specific control settings was also automatic. The ISPC transfer effect was abolished under high working memory load. Collectively, the findings suggest that reactive item-specific control is triggered and executed in an automatic manner (regardless of the available attentional resources), but only for items that directly support learning of the item-control associations that underlie item-specific control. We propose several hypotheses to account for these findings and discuss theoretical implications for control.