Aimed-movement responses and distributional analysis indicate distinctive cognitive control mechanisms in arrow...

Recent research on validity sequence effects (VSE) has drawn on conflict task theories to explain the psychological mechanisms underlying the VSE. This study analyzed a confound-minimized arrow cueing task and a prime-probe task using the aimed-movement method, which separates reaction times into initiation time (IT) and movement time (MT). Neutral stimuli were included to isolate the benefit/facilitation (or cost/interference) effects of the cues (or the primes). Distributional analyses showed that significant cueing effect and VSE only appeared in the IT data. In addition, the size of the cueing effect increased with the extension of the response latencies, mainly attributed to the increase in the cost effect by invalid cues. The size of the VSE did not vary at different response latencies and was mainly reflected by the enlarged cueing effect after previous valid cues. In comparison, the size of the congruency effect in the prime-probe task increased with the extension of the response latencies only in the MT data. Like VSE, the observed congruency sequence effect (CSE) appeared at IT data and the size of it did not vary at different response latencies, but the CSE was mainly reflected by the reduced congruency effect after previous incongruent trials. These findings are discussed and compared with literature findings from conflict tasks. The results indicate that the cueing effect of cueing tasks has qualitative difference with the congruency effect of conflict tasks, but the adaptive cognitive mechanisms (i.e., sequence effects) under these tasks are less different with each other.