The dominance of item learning in the location-specific proportion congruence paradigm

Prior research has shown that various cues are exploited to reactively adjust attention, and such adjustments depend on learning associations between cues and proportion congruence. This raises the intriguing question of what will be learned when more than one cue is available, a question that has implications for understanding which cue(s) will dominate in guiding reactive adjustments. Evidence from a picture-word Stroop task demonstrated that item learning dominated over location learning in a location-specific proportion congruence (LSPC) paradigm, a pattern that may explain the difficulty researchers have faced in replicating and reproducing the LSPC effect. One goal was to reproduce this pattern using a non-overlapping two-item set design that more closely matched prior studies, and another goal was to examine generalisability of the pattern to two other tasks. Using a prime-probe, colour–word Stroop task (Experiment 1), and a flanker task (Experiment 2), we again found clear dominance of item learning. In Experiment 3, we attempted to disrupt item learning and promote location learning by using a counting procedure that directed participants’ attention to location. Once again, we found the same pattern of item dominance. In addition, in none of the experiments did we find evidence for conjunctive (location–item) learning. Collectively, the findings suggest item learning is neither design- or task-specific; rather, it is robust, reliable, and not easily disrupted. Discussion centres on factors dictating dominance of item- over location-based adjustments and implications for the broader literature on LSPC effects.