Results

Introduction

Nonconditional Feedback Selectively Eliminates Conflict Adaption

Summary

Methods38 participants performed a parity judgment task with 784 trials.Stimuli: Digits (2 – 9); flankers were single digits (e.g., 686) and differed from target.Position of stimulus was shifted to left or right (inner flanker always in screen center).Task: Participants had to judge the parity of the central digit within 1000 ms.Feedback: A random feedback indicated monetary gain/loss/no change (20 cents).Quantity: 7 blocks à 112 Trials. Slightly more incongruent flanker trials (57% vs. 43%).3 Conflict Dimensions (congruent = C; incongruent = I):Flanker: Target and flankers can have the same (= C; 686) or differing parities (= I; 676).SNARC: Congruent if target digit is smaller (bigger) than 5 and expected response is

left (right). Incongruent in the other cases (e.g., target bigger 5, response left).Simon: Position of stimulus could correspond to expected response (= C) or not (= I).

ReferencesBotvinivck, M. M. , Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict Monitoring and Cognitive Control. Psychological Review, 108(3), 624- 652.van Steenbergen, H., Band, G. P. H., & Hommel, B. (2009). Reward counteracts conflict adaptation: Evidence for a role of affect in executive control. Psychological Science, 20, 1473-1477.Egner T. (2008). Multiple conflict-driven control mechanisms in the human brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 374-80.

Poster presented at the ESCOP Summer School in Computational and Mathematical Modeling of Cognition, Mallnitz, July 2010

Henrik Singmann henrik.singmann@psychologie.uni-freiburg.de

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fixation dot:500 ms

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random monetarygain or loss: 500 ms

Schematic Sequence of each Trial

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• Congruency effects in selective attention tasks are subject to sequential modulation: They are smaller following an incongruent stimulus than following a congruent one. This congruency sequence effect has been interpreted as reflecting conflict-driven adjustments in cognitive control (= conflict adaptation; Botvinick et al., 2001).

• Following the idea that the negative affective quality of perceived conflict triggers conflict adaption, Van Steenbergen, Band, & Hommel (2009) showed that noncontingent positive feedback after

trials, but not negative or neutral feedback, eliminated the conflict adaption effect in a flanker paradigm (i.e., the flanker congruency effect was unaffected by the congruency of the previous trial).

• Replicating Steenbergen et al. (2009) we failed to find differential effects of affective feedback. Instead, conflict adaption effects were eliminated under all feedback conditions, but selectively for a flanker conflict (as in Steenbergen et al.’s study), andnot for other conflicts (i.e., SNARC & Simon), indicating that it is not the affective quality of the conflict that eliminates conflict adaption.

• We found a behavioral dissociation of different conflict adaption mechanisms: Nonconditional feedback eliminated conflict adaption for a flanker conflict. However, for two different conflict dimensions we observed conflict adaption effects.

• We speculate that processing of nonconditional feedback occupies (perceptual) resources necessary for flanker conflict adaption. Conflict adaption for the other two conflict dimensions needs

other (spatial) resources which were not occupied by processing the feedback. Therefore, we draw two conclusions:

1. Conflict adaption is performed by multiple domain specific control mechanisms which can operate in parallel (Egner, 2007).

2. Conflict adaption needs specific (working-memory) resources. When these resources are occupied no conflict-adaption emerges.

• Before analyses we excluded first 3 trials of each block (2.7%), response omissions (0.6%), trials following error/response omission (11.7%), trials exceeding indiv. median +/- 1.5 * interquartile range (2.5%). MRT = 489 ms (363 – 609 ms), MER = 10.9% (3.9% – 32.1%)• Two ANOVAs (one for RT, one for ER) for each conflict dimension

(feedback × previous conflict × current conflict) revealed no

interaction of feedback with the conflict adaption effects: All 3-way interactions were not significant, Fs < 1.8, ps > .19.• Despite finding a substantial flanker effect (33 ms, 9%, ps < .001),

we did not find a flanker conflict adaption effect, Fs < 1.• We found congruency (SNARC: 9ms, 4%; Simon: 8ms, 2%) and

conflict adaption effects for SNARC and Simon conflict, ps < .015.