Figure 1
The personality continuums measured by the Big 5.
Table 1
Stimuli lists (A and B).
| LIST | SENTENCE ONSET | CRITICAL BIGRAM | SPILLOVER |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Everyone had heard about the | apparent conflict | between the president and his staff |
| A1 | Despite the | apparent failure | of the blockbuster movie, many tickets were sold |
| A2 | Despite the | obvious conflict | between the two friends, Charlotte attended the wedding |
| A2 | Everyone had heard about the | obvious failure | of the greatly anticipated romance novel |
| B1 | Despite the | apparent conflict | between the two friends, Charlotte attended the wedding |
| B1 | Everyone had heard about the | apparent failure | of the greatly anticipated romance novel |
| B2 | Everyone had heard about the | obvious conflict | between the president and his staff |
| B2 | Despite the | obvious failure | of the blockbuster movie, many tickets were sold |
Figure 2
Distribution of BTP across items, raw and log-transformed.
Table 2
Calculation of dependent variable for each individual difference assessment.
| TASK | MEASURE | DEPENDENT VARIABLE |
|---|---|---|
| Flanker task | Cognitive inhibition | Difference between mean RT to incompatible condition and mean RT to compatible condition, over correct answers only (where higher scores denote comparatively slower responses to incompatible condition) |
| Navon task | Global/local scope shifting | Difference between mean RT to local condition and mean RT to global condition, over correct answers only (where higher scores denote comparatively slower responses to local condition) |
| Reading span task | Verbal working memory | Proportion of words recalled correctly over all trials |
| Big 5 (OCEAN) traits | Personality | Mean of Likert scale questionnaire (1–5) where reverse scale items were assigned negative values. Average score across all 5 subcomponents taken as 0 point (to account for individual preferences in ranking oneself) and SD calculated across all subcomponents |
| Complex processing speed | Processing speed | Average RT in the complex task, over correct responses only |
Figure 3
Raw scores (per participant) on the individual difference tasks.
Figure 4
Scores on the Big Five personality components, centered at the participant’s mean score across all five components.
Table 3
Distribution and range of individual difference constructs, one score per participant.
| CONSTRUCT | DISTRIBUTION | RANGE | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEAN | SD | SKEWNESS | KURTOSIS | MIN | MAX | |
| Reaction speed (complex) | 488.98 | 156.38 | 3.87 | 21.28 | 338.89 | 1416.54 |
| Navon (global-local scope shifting) | –41.58 | 285.74 | 0.12 | 4.69 | –767.52 | 1063.72 |
| Flanker (inhibition) | 133.57 | 67.04 | 0.63 | 4.81 | –40.81 | 360.44 |
| Reading span (vWM) | 0.74 | 0.16 | –0.69 | 2.51 | 0.34 | 1.00 |
| Personality: Openness* | 0.41 | 0.92 | –0.52 | 2.64 | –2.26 | 1.79 |
| Personality: Conscientiousness* | 0.30 | 0.75 | –0.02 | 2.36 | –1.30 | 1.79 |
| Personality: Extraversion* | –0.54 | 0.86 | –0.05 | 2.42 | –2.45 | 1.30 |
| Personality: Agreeableness* | 0.31 | 0.79 | –0.31 | 2.38 | –1.59 | 1.79 |
| Personality: Neuroticism* | –0.48 | 1.19 | –0.09 | 2.07 | –2.84 | 1.79 |
[i] * Personality components are participant-centered (0 represents participant mean across all 5 components).
Figure 5
Spearman’s correlation between measures of endogenous and exogenous individual difference.
Figure 6
Distribution of response times, raw and log-transformed.
Table 4
Output of linear mixed effects model.
| LINEAR MIXED MODEL FIT BY MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Variance components: | |||||||
| Column | Variance | Std.Dev. | Corr. | ||||
| Id | (Intercept) | 0.0683 | 0.2614 | ||||
| trial_number_z | 0.0038 | 0.0618 | –0.12 | ||||
| word_number_z | 0.0004 | 0.0189 | –0.18 | –0.14 | |||
| length_z | 0.0005 | 0.0232 | 0.63 | –0.02 | –0.36 | ||
| prev_length_z | 0.0007 | 0.0263 | 0.57 | 0.08 | –0.32 | 0.49 | |
| w2 | (Intercept) | 0.0002 | 0.0140 | ||||
| trial_number_z | 0.0001 | 0.0094 | –0.30 | ||||
| w1 | (Intercept) | 0.0003 | 0.0185 | ||||
| trial_number_z | 0.0001 | 0.0077 | 0.05 | ||||
| Residual | 0.0597 | 0.2444 | |||||
| Number of obs: 75973; levels of grouping factors: 100, 143, 135 | |||||||
| Fixed-effects parameters: | |||||||
| Coef. | Std. Error | z | Pr(>|z|) | ||||
| (Intercept) | 5.7076 | 0.0289 | 197.8000 | <.0001 | |||
| BTP_lz | –0.0051 | 0.0017 | –2.9400 | 0.0033 | |||
| complex_rt_z | 0.0251 | 0.0224 | 1.1200 | 0.2617 | |||
| rst_mem_z | 0.0423 | 0.0215 | 1.9700 | 0.0490 | |||
| navon_z | –0.0024 | 0.0203 | –0.1200 | 0.9053 | |||
| flanker_z | 0.0100 | 0.0212 | 0.4700 | 0.6355 | |||
| big5_O_cz | –0.0116 | 0.0228 | –0.5100 | 0.6106 | |||
| big5_C_cz | 0.0167 | 0.0254 | 0.6600 | 0.5120 | |||
| big5_E_cz | 0.0064 | 0.0231 | 0.2800 | 0.7811 | |||
| big5_A_cz | 0.0029 | 0.0224 | 0.1300 | 0.8984 | |||
| big5_N_cz | –0.0434 | 0.0259 | –1.6800 | 0.0937 | |||
| age_z | 0.0467 | 0.0232 | 2.0100 | 0.0440 | |||
| position: noun | –0.0087 | 0.0020 | –4.4300 | <.0001 | |||
| position: spillover_1 | 0.0149 | 0.0014 | 10.7300 | <.0001 | |||
| trial_number_z | –0.1139 | 0.0063 | –17.9900 | <.0001 | |||
| word_number_z | –0.0058 | 0.0023 | –2.4800 | 0.0132 | |||
| length_z | 0.0122 | 0.0026 | 4.6400 | <.0001 | |||
| prev_length_z | 0.0266 | 0.0030 | 8.9900 | <.0001 | |||
| origin: UK | 0.0069 | 0.0223 | 0.3100 | 0.7564 | |||
| education: Grad school | 0.0316 | 0.0373 | 0.8500 | 0.3971 | |||
| education: Undergraduate | –0.0210 | 0.0281 | –0.7400 | 0.4563 | |||
| BTP_lz & complex_rt_z | –0.0016 | 0.0011 | –1.4900 | 0.1371 | |||
| BTP_lz & rst_mem_z | 0.0000 | 0.0010 | 0.0300 | 0.9738 | |||
| BTP_lz & navon_z | 0.0022 | 0.0010 | 2.2200 | 0.0265 | |||
| BTP_lz & flanker_z | 0.0023 | 0.0010 | 2.2200 | 0.0265 | |||
| BTP_lz & big5_O_cz | 0.0006 | 0.0011 | 0.5600 | 0.5774 | |||
| BTP_lz & big5_C_cz | –0.0021 | 0.0012 | –1.6800 | 0.0930 | |||
| BTP_lz & big5_E_cz | 0.0002 | 0.0011 | 0.1600 | 0.8748 | |||
| BTP_lz & big5_A_cz | 0.0020 | 0.0011 | 1.8900 | 0.0592 | |||
| BTP_lz & big5_N_cz | 0.0003 | 0.0012 | 0.2600 | 0.7949 | |||
| BTP_lz & age_z | –0.0014 | 0.0011 | –1.2400 | 0.2140 | |||
| BTP_lz & navon_z & position: noun | 0.0001 | 0.0013 | 0.0700 | 0.9476 | |||
| BTP_lz & navon_z & position: spillover_1 | –0.0001 | 0.0013 | –0.0700 | 0.9415 | |||
| BTP_lz & flanker_z & position: noun | 0.0011 | 0.0013 | 0.8900 | 0.3750 | |||
| BTP_lz & flanker_z & position: spillover_1 | –0.0018 | 0.0013 | –1.4300 | 0.1534 | |||
Figure 7
Interaction between (centered, z-scored) backward transition probability and (centered, z-scored) Flanker score, in which higher score represents a greater slowing in the incompatible distractor condition.
Figure 8
Interaction between (centered, z-scored) backward transition probability and (centered, z-scored) Navon score, in which higher score represents overall slower responses in the local condition (and lower score shows overall slower responses in the global condition).