Incongruent items in school-topic tasks are generally associated with longer response times and lower accuracy, patterns consistent with inhibitory control recruitment¶
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Evidence · 1 study · reviewr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
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q2 i? In the reviewed tasks, incongruent (counterintuitive) items were generally associated with longer response times and lower accuracy than congruent items, a pattern the authors interpret as consistent with inhibitory control engagement. → Élisabeth Bélanger 2026
Evidence¶
Élisabeth Bélanger 2026¶
Élisabeth Bélanger, Marine Moyon, Lorie-Marlène Brault Foisy, Steve Masson. (2026). Primary School Learning Topics Involving Inhibitory Control: A Scoping Review. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-026-10198-5
q2 · i? · review · r2
Review of behavioral data collected in all 54 experiments using tasks with congruent and incongruent items. The review states "incongruent items were generally associated with longer response times and lower accuracy", with reported interference effects on response time ranging from 175 to 1993 ms.
"incongruent items were generally associated with longer response times and lower accuracy, patterns that are consistent with the recruitment of inhibitory control."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Incongruent dot comparison trials are less accurate and slower than congruent trials, consistent with an added inhibition step — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Adolescents show lower accuracy and longer reaction times on counterintuitive misconception trials than on matched control trials in science and maths — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Reanalysis of previously-published data replicates the incongruent-trial pattern in children, with a marginal effect in adults — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Flanker task produces congruency effects in reaction time and accuracy in twelve-year-old children — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Dot Task accuracy decreased from congruent to incongruent to mixed trials, with condition accuracies positively correlated — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
- Balanced bicultural identity showed no relation to working memory or inhibitory control performance in congruent and incongruent Dot Task trials — related
- Smaller response-time differences between incongruent and congruent trials (better inhibition) correlate with higher mathematics scores — related
- Better response inhibition (complex No-Go accuracy) is associated with longer reaction times on counterintuitive misconception trials, not better performance — related
- Experimental evidence consistent with inhibitory control involvement spans primary school learning topics primarily in mathematics, but also science and language — a broader claim this one bears on
- The true-versus-false statement accuracy difference is larger for misconception than control trials, and significant for science but not maths — related
- The correlation between dot comparison performance and children's mathematics achievement is driven by incongruent, not congruent, trials — related
- Gesture–speech incongruency disrupts multimodal processing, increasing response times and error rates — related
- Verbal working memory positively and inhibitory control negatively relate to accuracy in the contrasting multiple-choice task — related
- Both text incongruency and knowledge inaccuracy produce increased reading times on target sentences — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
incongruent-items-longer-rt-lower-accuracy |
title |
Incongruent items in school-topic tasks are generally associated with longer response times and lower accuracy, patterns consistent with inhibitory control recruitment |
description |
Incongruent items in school-topic tasks are generally associated with longer response times and lower accuracy, patterns consistent with inhibitory control recruitment |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2026 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-19 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — élisabeth-bélanger-2026 |
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