Fig 1.
Possible mechanisms for avoiding associations generated in previous trials.
The figure illustrates pure reactive (A), and pure proactive thought control (B), as well three mechanisms of latent proactive control (C-E). Each row displays in the rightmost trial how one (`Chair`in panels A-C) or two (`Chair`and `Eat`in panels D-E) prior associations are avoided in favor of a new association (‘Desk`). Partial latent proactive control may be achieved by mitigating the natural, episodic enhancement of repeated associations (compare panel C with panel A), or by triggering proactive control after a first candidate association is rejected (panels D and E). The latter, post-rejection mechanism may be able to prevent any repeated association (D) or only the association that has just been rejected (E). Line thickness corresponds to associative strength. Dashed lines represent possible associations whereas solid lines represent the actual enacted policy. Reported associations are highlighted in blue. The unique characteristics of each solution are highlighted in yellow, shown only for the rightmost trials, together with green circles denoting acceptance and reporting of an association and red circles denoting rejection of a generated association, leading to an attempt to think of an alternative association.
Fig 2.
Median response times for the two groups, and different trial types.
Black points represent average across participants (± 95% bootstrap confidence interval). Grey points and lines depict median response times for individual participants.
Table 1.
The table shows Bayesian Information Criteria Difference in fitting the experimental data from the two study groups, relative to the model that best fitted each group (for which the difference is 0).
Fig 3.
Absolute fit of the winning SMP models (see Table 1) in both groups.
A) simulated vs. empirical number of repeated associations per participant. B) simulated (error bars) vs. empirical (black points) RT distributions (10th, 30th, 50th, 70, and 90th quantiles are depicted) for the different trial types, averaged across participants.