What determines the scope of adaptive control in conflict tasks: A meta-analysis

A long-standing debate in cognitive science is whether cognitive control recruits domain-general or domain-specific processes. A useful paradigm to study this is the congruency sequence effect, which reflects the reduced impact of congruency after an incongruent trial. Many studies examined the congruency sequence effect across task in order to investigate domain generality. However, differences in how task dissimilarity was manipulated led to different conclusions about the nature of adaptive control. Therefore, we conducted a systematic, preregistered meta-analysis of 169 experiments (229 effect sizes). On average, the cross-task congruency sequence effect (Hedges’ gz = 0.252) decreased as task dissimilarity increased, with some factors influencing adaptive control more than others. Especially when tasks used a different response modality or conflict arose from different irrelevant stimulus dimensions, we observed a decreased cross-task congruency sequence effect, suggesting adaptive control is both action-oriented and involves distractor suppression. Notably, however, when tasks shared the same conflict type, larger congruency sequence effects were observed when stimulus and response sets were distinct rather than partially overlapping. Together, these findings refine current theories by pointing to a central role for the different motor modalities, distractor suppression, and shared versus separate task representations, moving beyond a simple domain-general versus domain-specific distinction.Keywords: meta analysis, conflict adaptation, congruency sequence effect, domain generality, cognitive control