Do congruency effects in Navon's and Stroop's paradigms reflect the same (control) mechanisms? A conceptual analysis...

Many paradigms in cognitive psychology have been designed to induce conflicts that must be resolved prior to response, and many of these paradigms have therefore also been used to examine cognitive control. It is still a matter of debate, however, whether the conflicts induced by different paradigms reflect the same cognitive (control) processes. In the present study, we first present a conceptual analysis of similarities and differences between two classic and widely used paradigms that induce conflicts: the Navon and Stroop paradigms. Based on this analysis, we predicted a small positive correlation to exist between the paradigms in congruency effects (the difference between trials with conflicting and congruent information). We tested this hypothesis using an individual differences approach. Contrary to expectation, the data obtained were much more likely under the null hypothesis. Given that the result was obtained in a large sample (N = 615), with reliable measures (>.7), across differently derived indexes of congruency (standardized effect sizes, plain difference scores, residuals from regression, and balanced integration scores), and with paradigms that gave rise to the expected congruency effects-which also varied considerably across individuals-this suggests that the congruency effects induced by the two paradigms reflect unrelated processes. Based on this, we argue that the congruency effects in Navon's and Stroop's paradigms can originate at different levels of processing. In particular, congruency effects in Navon's paradigm may arise at a perceptual level, and conflict at this level can apparently also be resolved in a modality-specific manner. This demonstrates that there is a limit on the degree of domain generality in cognitive control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).