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Contextual within-trial adaptation of cognitive control: Evidence from the combination of conflict tasks

Authors :
Rey-Mermet, Alodie
Gade, Miriam
Source :
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 42:1505-1532
Publication Year :
2016
Publisher :
American Psychological Association (APA), 2016.

Abstract

It is assumed that we recruit cognitive control (i.e., attentional adjustment and/or inhibition) to resolve 2 conflicts at a time, such as driving toward a red traffic light and taking care of a near-by ambulance car. A few studies have addressed this issue by combining a Simon task (that required responding with left or right key-press to a stimulus presented on the left or right side of the screen) with either a Stroop task (that required identifying the color of color words) or a Flanker task (that required identifying the target character among flankers). In most studies, the results revealed no interaction between the conflict tasks. However, these studies include a small stimulus set, and participants might have learned the stimulus-response mappings for each stimulus. Thus, it is possible that participants have more relied on episodic memory than on cognitive control to perform the task. In 5 experiments, we combined the 3 tasks pairwise, and we increased the stimulus set size to circumvent episodic memory contributions. The results revealed an interaction between the conflict tasks: Irrespective of task combination, the congruency effect of 1 task was smaller when the stimulus was incongruent for the other task. This suggests that when 2 conflicts are presented concurrently, the control processes induced by 1 conflict source can affect the control processes induced by the other conflict source. (PsycINFO Database Record

Details

ISSN :
19391277 and 00961523
Volume :
42
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Accession number :
edsair.doi.dedup.....01557e6d5c624ad08876d9a62f1ca7d8