Boundary conditions for the influence of spatial proximity on context-specific attentional settings

Flexibility of cognitive control is illustrated by the context-specific proportion compatibility (CSPC) effect, the now well-documented pattern showing that compatibility effects are reduced in mostly incompatible relative to mostly compatible locations. The episodic-retrieval account attributes the CSPC effect to location-specific representations that include the attentional settings formed via experience within a given location (e.g., a “focused” attentional setting becomes bound to a location with frequent conflict, whereas a “relaxed” setting becomes bound to one with infrequent conflict). However, Diede and Bugg (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78, 1255–1266, 2016) demonstrated that the attentional setting associated with a given location can be based on experiences that accumulate across multiple “grouped” locations—namely, those that are proximal to each other, relative to other (distal) locations. This spatial grouping effect supported the relative-proximity hypothesis, which we further tested in the present study. Experiment 1 replicated the spatial grouping effect and showed that it could be disrupted by a horizontal line dividing the otherwise grouped locations. Experiments 2 through 4 suggested that grouping might be a form of “chunking”—that is, the spatial grouping effect did not occur when the proximal locations were few enough in number (two) to represent independently, but it did occur when there were six locations. When there were eight proximal locations (and ten locations overall), the CSPC effect disappeared entirely. These findings suggest important boundary conditions for the relative-proximity hypothesis and inform our understanding of how past experiences with conflict are organized in the form of episodic representations that enable on-the-fly adjustments in cognitive control.