Do flexibility and stability trade off? Manipulating the proportion of switch and bivalent trials in the same blocks

Cognitive flexibility has been widely investigated using the task switching paradigm. In this context, it is common to observe that switching between tasks comes with a performance cost compared to repeating the same task. The resulting switch cost is therefore taken as a measure of cognitive flexibility. Importantly, previous studies have reported that the switch cost decreases in blocks where switches are frequent, thus suggesting that participants are more flexible when the probability of switching is high. In this regard, theories proposing that flexibility necessarily trades off with stability predict that increased flexibility should come with the cost of increased stimulus-based task conflict. In order to test this theory, the current study will investigate whether manipulating the proportion of switches affects the valency effect, a measure of stimulus-based task conflict. If there is a trade-off between stability and flexibility, we should observe a larger valency effect in majority-switch blocks. The present study is an extension of another study pre-registered at: https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.14614. Different stimuli and tasks are used.

Cognitive flexibility has been widely investigated using the task switching paradigm. In this context, it is common to observe that switching between tasks comes with a performance cost compared to repeating the same task. The resulting switch cost is therefore taken as a measure of cognitive flexibility. Importantly, previous studies have reported that the switch cost decreases in blocks where switches are frequent, thus suggesting that participants are more flexible when the probability of switching is high. In this regard, theories proposing that flexibility necessarily trades off with stability predict that increased flexibility should come with the cost of increased stimulus-based task conflict. In order to test this theory, the current study will investigate whether manipulating the proportion of switches affects the valency effect, a measure of stimulus-based task conflict. If there is a trade-off between stability and flexibility, we should observe a larger valency effect in majority-switch blocks.