Tenacious Instructions: How to Dismantle Newly Instructed Task Rules?

Elger Abrahamse; Senne Braem; Jan De Houwer; Baptist Liefooghe

doi:10.1037/xge0001233

Tenacious Instructions: How to Dismantle Newly Instructed Task Rules?

Elger Abrahamse, Senne Braem, Jan De Houwer, Baptist Liefooghe^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Humans excel in instruction following to boost performance in unfamiliar situations. We can do so through so-called prepared reflexes: Abstract instructions are instantly translated into appropriate task rules in procedural working memory, after which imperative stimuli directly trigger their corresponding responses in a ballistic, reflex-like manner. But how much control do we have over these instructed task rules when their reflexes suddenly lose their relevance? Inspired by the phenomenon of directed forgetting in declarative working memory, we here tested across four experiments whether the presentation of (implicit or explicit) task cancellation cues results in the directed dismantling of recently instructed task rules. Our findings suggest that—even when cancelation cues are actively processed—such dismantling does not occur (Experiment 1–3) unless the no-longer relevant task rules are replaced by a new set of rules (Experiment 4). These findings and their implications are discussed in the broader context of action control and working memory

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2812-2832
Number of pages	21
Journal	Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Volume	151
Issue number	11
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001233
Publication status	Published - 5 May 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Elger Abrahamse and Baptist Liefooghe contributed equally to this article. This research was supported by Grant BOF16/MET_V/002 of Ghent University to Jan De Houwer, and by Grant G00951N of the Flemish Government to Baptist Liefooghe and Jan De Houwer. Senne Braem was supported by an ERC Starting Grant (European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, Grant 852570). Raw data and corresponding processing scripts are available at https://osf.io/au7pv/(Liefooghe, 2021)

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 American Psychological Association

Funding

Elger Abrahamse and Baptist Liefooghe contributed equally to this article. This research was supported by Grant BOF16/MET_V/002 of Ghent University to Jan De Houwer, and by Grant G00951N of the Flemish Government to Baptist Liefooghe and Jan De Houwer. Senne Braem was supported by an ERC Starting Grant (European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, Grant 852570). Raw data and corresponding processing scripts are available at https://osf.io/au7pv/(Liefooghe, 2021)

Keywords

Action control
Cognitive control
Directed forgetting
Instruction following
Working memory

Access to Document

10.1037/xge0001233

00004785-202211000-00011Final published version, 2.42 MBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

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title = "Tenacious Instructions: How to Dismantle Newly Instructed Task Rules?",

abstract = "Humans excel in instruction following to boost performance in unfamiliar situations. We can do so through so-called prepared reflexes: Abstract instructions are instantly translated into appropriate task rules in procedural working memory, after which imperative stimuli directly trigger their corresponding responses in a ballistic, reflex-like manner. But how much control do we have over these instructed task rules when their reflexes suddenly lose their relevance? Inspired by the phenomenon of directed forgetting in declarative working memory, we here tested across four experiments whether the presentation of (implicit or explicit) task cancellation cues results in the directed dismantling of recently instructed task rules. Our findings suggest that—even when cancelation cues are actively processed—such dismantling does not occur (Experiment 1–3) unless the no-longer relevant task rules are replaced by a new set of rules (Experiment 4). These findings and their implications are discussed in the broader context of action control and working memory",

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Tenacious Instructions: How to Dismantle Newly Instructed Task Rules?

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