Increasing set size breaks down sequential congruency: evidence for an associative locus of cognitive control

In recent years, a number of studies have revealed that cognitive control is strongly context-dependent (e.g., Crump et al., 2006). Inspired by this, computational models have been formulated based on the idea that cognitive control processes are based on associative learning (Blais et al., 2007; Verguts & Notebaert, 2008). Here, we test a natural consequence of this idea, namely, that sequential congruency effects (Gratton et al., 1992) should gradually decrease with an increasing number of task-relevant features (e.g., stimuli). The effect is empirically observed and simulated in a computational model. Implications of our findings are discussed.