Binding and Retrieval of Control states - control decay due to retrieval delay - Repetition 3

A commonly found effect in conflict tasks is the congruency sequence effect (CSE; Egner, 2008). This effect is defined by the reduction of congruency effects in post-conflict trials. Two theoretical approaches compete for the explanation of this phenomenon: Control accounts describe the CSE as the result of adaption processes, which regulate the attentional focus to the task-relevant dimension and/or result in the inhibition of task-irrelevant information. In contrast, binding accounts attribute the CSE to the learning of stimulus-response (S-R) combinations. This type of short term associative learning is referred to as binding. In subsequent trials the partial retrieval of such bound S-R combinations leads to impaired performance in comparison to the complete retrieval of an S-R combination or no retrieval at all. Recent theories tried to integrate both approaches. So, it is hypothesized that not only S-R combinations can be bound and retrieved, but also the current cognitive state, which would also include the degree of cognitive control currently implemented. There is first evidence indicating that the binding and retrieval of such control states impact on the CSE (Dignath, Johannsen, Hommel, & Kiesel, 2019). With this study we want to replicate a lab pilot study that investigated the decay of control states (OSF Registration: https://osf.io/8thvs). Our study’s goal is to replicate the pilot study with a bigger sample size. The replication study will be conducted on an online testing environment using jsPsych (de Leeuw, 2015), a library for JavaScript that allows to program web browser based experiments.