Spapé Michiel M, Hommel Bernhard
Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2008 Dec;15(6):1117-21. doi: 10.3758/PBR.15.6.1117.
People respond more slowly if an irrelevant feature of a target stimulus is incompatible with the relevant feature or the correct response. Such compatibility effects are often reduced in trials following an incompatible trial, which has been taken to reflect increased cognitive control. This pattern holds only if two trials share some similarities, however, suggesting that it may be modulated by the episodic context. To look into this possibility, we had participants respond to high- or low-pitched tones by saying "high" or "low," respectively, and ignore the simultaneously presented auditory word "high" or "low." As expected, performance was impaired if the heard word was incompatible with the required response, and this Stroop-like effect was reduced after incompatible trials. This sequential modulation was observed, however, only if the voice in the two successive trials was the same, whereas no modulation was obtained when the speaker changed. The results suggest that sequential modulations are due to the automatic retrieval of episodic event representations that integrate stimuli, actions, and situational and task-specific control information, so that later reactivation of some elements of a given representation tends to retrieve the other elements as well.
如果目标刺激的无关特征与相关特征或正确反应不相容，人们的反应会更慢。在不相容试验后的试验中，这种相容性效应通常会减弱，这被认为反映了认知控制的增强。然而，只有当两次试验有一些相似之处时，这种模式才成立，这表明它可能会受到情景背景的调节。为了探究这种可能性，我们让参与者分别通过说“高”或“低”来对高音或低音音调做出反应，并忽略同时呈现的听觉单词“高”或“低”。正如预期的那样，如果听到的单词与所需反应不相容，表现就会受损，并且这种类似斯特鲁普效应在不相容试验后会减弱。然而，只有当连续两次试验中的声音相同时，才会观察到这种顺序调节，而当说话者改变时则不会得到调节。结果表明，顺序调节是由于情景事件表征的自动检索，这些表征整合了刺激、动作以及情景和任务特定的控制信息，因此给定表征的某些元素的后续重新激活也倾向于检索其他元素。
