Between-Task Transfer of Item-Specific Control Is Replicable and Extends to Novel Conditions

Learning-guided control refers to adjustments of cognitive control settings based on learned associations between predictive cues and the likelihood of conflict. In three preregistered experiments, we examined transfer of item-specific control settings beyond conditions under which they were learned. In Experiment 1, an item-specific proportion congruence (ISPC) manipulation was applied in a training phase in which target color in a Flanker task was biased (mostly congruent or mostly incongruent). In a subsequent transfer phase, participants performed a color-word Stroop task in which the same target colors were unbiased (50% congruent). The same design was implemented in Experiment 2, but training and transfer tasks were intermixed within blocks. Between-task transfer was evidenced in both experiments, suggesting learned control settings associated with the predictive cues were retrieved when encountering unbiased transfer items. In Experiment 3, we investigated a farther version of between-task transfer by using training (color-word Stroop) and transfer (picture-word Stroop) tasks that did not share the relevant (to-be-named) dimension or response sets. Despite the stronger, between-task boundary, we observed an ISPC effect for the transfer items, but it did not emerge until the second half of the experiment. The results provided converging evidence for the flexibility and automaticity of item-specific control.