ArticleJournal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance2026
When forewarned is not forearmed: No evidence for cue-based proactive control in the spatial Stroop task.
Article in Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The puzzle of profitless pre-cues.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Pooled it
- When forewarned is not forearmed: No evidence for cue-based proactive control in the spatial Stroop task.Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
It is commonly assumed that people can use advance cues to proactively prepare for conflict from distracting stimulus features, yet empirical findings remain inconsistent. We tested the hypothesis that nonarbitrary stimulus-response (S-R) mappings are a key determinant of cue effectiveness, as vocal Stroop tasks (with nonarbitrary color-naming responses) have shown reliable cue benefits, whereas manual Stroop tasks (with arbitrary key press responses) typically have not. Across five experiments, using a spatial Stroop task with nonarbitrary S-R mappings, we consistently found no evidence that participants used predictive cues to proactively resolve conflict on incongruent trials. Despite providing optimal preparation conditions (100% valid cues, 2,000 ms preparation time), cue benefits only emerged on congruent trials when task difficulty was increased substantially (50 ms stimulus presentation, Experiment 4), likely reflecting a strategic shortcut rather than enhanced proactive control. These findings demonstrate that nonarbitrary S-R mappings are not a sufficient condition for ensuring cue-based engagement of proactive control and challenge the assumption that this form of control is a readily deployable, domain-general mechanism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.