The role of the cognitive activity context in the conservatism of unconscious visual sets

Studies in healthy adults were performed to compare measures of the rigidity of a verbal set in three series of experiments: in series 1, pseudowords were presented at the set-forming stage of the experiment, while common words were presented in the test stage; series 2 used the pseudoword/word conditions of series 1 with the additional task of identifying the position of a target stimulus in a matrix, requiring discrimination from other symbols in terms of two characteristics; in series 3, the pseudoword/word test was followed by an initial task consisting of identifying the matrix position of a target stimulus in conditions in which the need to discriminate was minimized. The results supported the hypothesis that the rigidity of a visual set depends on the cognitive activity context. This property is significantly dependent on the loading applied to working memory and the cognitive tasks solved by the subject, particularly the ratio of involvement of the ventral and dorsal visual systems in the cortical processing of sequentially acting verbal and non-verbal visual stimuli. The cognitive set paradigm serves as a model for experimental studies of the roles of the ventral and dorsal visual systems in organizing recognition functions.