Are the automatic effects of instructions modulated by instructed, context-specific strategic control?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Behavior

Background:

• Automatic effects of instructions (AEIs) are well-documented for simple stimulus-response (S-R) mappings.
• Evidence for AEIs with complex rules is inconsistent, particularly regarding strategic control.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if context-specific strategic control routines influence AEIs in the NEXT paradigm.
• To determine if strategic reduction of target stimulus information impacts automatic behavior.

Main Methods:

• Participants received instructions on S-R mappings and context-specific probabilities for stimuli in GO trials.
• NEXT trials involved a consistent response, while GO trials required mapping-specific responses.
• Three experiments, including one preregistered, were conducted using the NEXT paradigm.

Main Results:

• GO performance was modulated by the probabilistic context, indicating strategic implementation.
• AEIs remained consistent across different strategic contexts.
• The adopted strategy did not significantly affect automatic behavioral responses.

Conclusions:

• Complex instructions, even with strategic components, do not automatically trigger strategic control in dynamic environments.
• Strategic control routines, aimed at reducing evidence accumulation, did not alter automatic effects of instructions.
• Findings suggest a dissociation between strategic and automatic processing in response to complex instructions.