In Support of a Distinction between Voluntary and Stimulus-Driven Control: A Review of the Literature on Proportion Congruent Effects

Bugg, Julie M.; Crump, Matthew J. C. · 2012 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00367

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Summary

This review article addresses the theoretical distinction between voluntary and stimulus-driven cognitive control by synthesizing literature on Proportion Congruent (PC) effects. The authors argue that the traditional dichotomy between controlled (voluntary, effortful) and automatic (involuntary, effortless) processes is insufficient. Instead, they propose a framework distinguishing between distal control (voluntary, strategic adjustments based on anticipatory information) and proximal control (stimulus-driven, rapid adjustments triggered by specific stimuli). The paper aims to demonstrate how PC manipulations at different levels—list-wide, item-specific, and context-specific—provide empirical evidence for this distinction, particularly highlighting the existence of "automatic control," where attentional filtering is reflexively triggered by environmental cues. The authors analyze experimental data primarily from selective attention paradigms, including the Stroop, flanker, and task-switching tasks. They categorize PC manipulations into three types: List-Wide PC (LWPC), where blocks of trials are mostly congruent or incongruent; Item-Specific PC (ISPC), where specific items are assigned to mostly congruent or incongruent sets within a mixed block; and Context-Specific PC (CSPC). The review critically examines competing accounts for ISPC effects, specifically contrasting the item-specific control account (which posits stimulus-attention associations) against the contingency-learning account (which posits stimulus-response associations). The authors highlight key experimental designs, such as those by Bugg et al. (2011a) and Bugg and Hutchison (2012), which disentangled PC from contingency by manipulating which dimension (relevant or irrelevant) signaled the proportion congruency. These designs allowed for the isolation of control mechanisms from simple associative learning. The findings indicate that LWPC effects reflect voluntary, distal control, as participants strategically adjust attention based on the likelihood of conflict in a block. In contrast, ISPC and CSPC effects reflect stimulus-driven, proximal control. The review concludes that ISPC effects are not solely due to contingency learning; rather, they involve rapid, online adjustments of attentional filters triggered by specific stimuli. Evidence from transfer trials and designs where the relevant dimension signaled PC supports the existence of item-specific control mechanisms that operate independently of stimulus-response contingencies. The locus of the ISPC signal (whether it is signaled by the relevant or irrelevant dimension) moderates whether control-based or contingency-based processes dominate. The significance of this work lies in its redefinition of cognitive control terminology. By adopting the terms proximal/distal and exogenous/endogenous, the authors provide a more nuanced understanding of how attention is regulated. The review establishes that automatic processes are not merely passive but can actively enact control over attention and action. This distinction has broad implications for understanding the interplay between strategic planning and reactive processing in human cognition, suggesting that future research should utilize PC manipulations to further dissociate these levels of control across various paradigms.

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• executive function
• task switching