Can people be explicitly instructed to use a visual or verbal strategy when encoding instructions?

Recent findings have shown that language plays an important role in the encoding of novel task instructions. Specifically, Van ‘t Wout and Jarrold (2022) found that performance on a choice reaction time task was worse when a verbal distractor task (rather than a non-verbal distractor task) had been performed during the instruction phase of the task. However, it remains unknown whether people can be explicitly instructed to use a particular strategy when encoding instructions. In this study, one group of participants (N=36) will be explicitly instructed to use a verbal strategy, and one group of participants (N=36) will be explicitly instructed to use a visual strategy. unknown other