Abstract
In the conflict/control loop theory proposed by Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, and Cohen (2001), conflict monitored in a trial leads to an increase in cognitive control on the subsequent trial. The critical data pattern supporting this assertion is the so-called Gratton effect—the decrease in flanker interference following incongruent trials—which was initially observed in the Eriksen flanker task. Recently, however, the validity of the idea that this pattern supports a general conflict/control mechanism has been questioned on the grounds that the Gratton effect is only observed with stimulus repetition. We present an experiment testing whether the Gratton effect reflects a stimulus-independent increase in cognitive control or stimulus-specific repetition priming. Although our results support the latter hypothesis, the priming effect is modulated by the congruency of the previous trial. We discuss a new mechanism through which monitored conflict is used to exert executive control by modulating stimulus-response associations.
Article PDF
References
Blais, C., Robidoux, S., Risko, E. F., & Besner, D. (2007). Item-specific adaptation and the conflict-monitoring hypothesis: A computational model. Psychological Review, 114, 1076–1086.
Botvinick, M. M., Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychological Review, 108, 624–652.
Davelaar, E. J. (2008). A computational study of conflict-monitoring at two levels of processing: Reaction time distributional analyses and hemodynamic responses. Brain Research, 1202, 109–119.
Eriksen, B. A., & Eriksen, C. W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception & Psychophysics, 16, 143–149.
Frings, C., Rothermund, K., & Wentura, D. (2007). Distractor repetitions retrieve previous responses to targets. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 1367–1377.
Gratton G., Coles, M. G. H., & Donchin, E. (1992). Optimizing the use of information: Strategic control of activation of responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 121, 480–506.
Gratton, G., Coles, M. G. H., Sirevaag, E. J., Eriksen, C. W., & Donchin, E. (1988). Pre- and poststimulus activation of response channels: A psychophysiological analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 14, 331–344.
Hommel, B. (1998). Event files: Evidence for automatic integration of stimulus-response episodes. Visual Cognition, 5, 183–216.
Hommel, B. (2004). Event files: Feature binding in and across perception and action. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 494–500.
Mayr, U., Awh, E., & Laurey, P. (2003). Conflict adaptation effects in the absence of executive control. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 450–452.
Nieuwenhuis, S., Stins, J. F., Posthuma, D., Polderman, T. J. C., Boomsma, D. I., & de Geus, E. J. (2006). Accounting for sequential trial effects in the flanker task: Conflict adaptation or associative priming? Memory & Cognition, 34, 1260–1272.
Notebaert, W., & Verguts, T. (2006). Stimulus conflict predicts conflict adaptation in a numerical flanker task. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 13, 1078–1084.
Ridderinkhof, K. R., Scheres, A., Oosterlaan, J., & Sergeant, J. A. (2005). Delta plots in the study of individual differences: New tools reveal response inhibition deficits in AD/HD that are eliminated by methylphenidate treatment. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 114, 197–215.
Roelofs, A., van Turennout, M., & Coles, M. G. H. (2006). Anterior cingulate cortex activity can be independent of response conflict in Stroop-like tasks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103, 13884–13889.
Spieler, D. H., Balota, D. A., & Faust, M. E. (2000). Levels of selective attention revealed through analyses of response time distributions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 26, 506–526.
Ullsperger, M., Bylsma, L. M., & Botvinick, M. M. (2005). The conflict adaptation effect: It’s not just priming. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 5, 467–472.
Verguts, T., & Notebaert, W. (2008). Hebbian learning of cognitive control: Dealing with specific and nonspecific adaptation. Psychological Review, 115, 518–525.
Wylie, S. A., Ridderinkhof, K. R., Eckerle, M. K., & Maning, C. A. (2007). Inefficient response inhibition in individuals with mild cognitive impairment. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1408–1419.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Davelaar, E.J., Stevens, J. Sequential dependencies in the Eriksen flanker task: A direct comparison of two competing accounts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 16, 121–126 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.1.121
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.1.121