When Stimulus-Driven Control Settings Compete: On the Dominance of Categories as Cues for Control

Stimulus-driven or reactive control refers to the modulation of attention poststimulus onset via retrieval of learned control settings associated with task stimuli. The present study asked which stimulus-driven control setting wins the competition when more than 1 is available to guide attention. Utilizing an item-specific proportion congruence manipulation in a picture-word Stroop task, 7 experiments examined competition between item-level and category-level control settings. In Experiment 1, category-level control dominated as evidenced by transfer of control to unique 50% congruent items (exemplars) from biased (33% or 67% congruent) animal categories. In Experiment 2, the dominance persisted-transfer was observed even for inconsistent transfer items (e.g., 83% congruent bird from a 33% congruent bird category). Recategorization of the exemplars prior to the Stroop task (Experiment 3a) successfully shifted the dominance to item-level control as did changing the Stroop task goal (Experiment 4a); however, exposure to the exemplars (Experiment 3b) and individuation training prior to the Stroop task did not (Experiments 3c and 4b). These novel findings suggest category-level control dominates in guiding attention poststimulus onset, but this dominance is dependent on contextual features (i.e., mutable). We propose a salience account of dominance and discuss implications for item-based computational models.