Purmann Sascha, Badde Stephanie, Wendt Mike
Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2009 Apr;16(2):350-5. doi: 10.3758/PBR.16.2.350.
In conflict paradigms such as the Eriksen flanker task, interference has been found to be reduced under conditions of recent and/or frequent cognitive conflict. Using a modified flanker task, we investigated the interplay of conflict recency and conflict frequency by comparing the interference reductions following conflict trials under conditions in which conflict was either frequent or infrequent overall, while controlling for stimulus and response feature repetitions to rule out nonattentional accounts. The reduction of flanker interference after a conflict trial was attenuated when overall conflict was frequent. This result is consistent with models assuming that processing adjustments occur gradually in response to conflict strength, such as the connectionist model of Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, and Cohen (2001), in which both recency and frequency modulations are brought about by the same mechanism. By decomposing response times into initiation times and movement times, we revealed that frequent conflict delayed response initiation but sped up movement. Moreover, whereas frequent conflict reduced interference in both components, interference reduction after individual conflict trials was confined to movement times. Taken together, these results suggest that different mechanisms underlie the two kinds of modulation.
在诸如埃里克森侧翼任务等冲突范式中，人们发现，在近期和/或频繁出现认知冲突的情况下，干扰会减少。我们使用一种改良的侧翼任务，通过比较在总体冲突频繁或不频繁的条件下冲突试验后的干扰减少情况，来研究冲突新近度和冲突频率之间的相互作用，同时控制刺激和反应特征的重复，以排除非注意力因素。当总体冲突频繁时，冲突试验后侧翼干扰的减少会减弱。这一结果与假设加工调整会根据冲突强度逐渐发生的模型一致，比如博特温尼克、布雷弗、巴奇、卡特和科恩（2001年）的联结主义模型，在该模型中，新近度和频率调制是由相同机制产生的。通过将反应时间分解为启动时间和移动时间，我们发现频繁冲突会延迟反应启动但加快移动速度。此外，虽然频繁冲突会减少两个成分中的干扰，但个别冲突试验后的干扰减少仅限于移动时间。综上所述，这些结果表明这两种调制背后存在不同的机制。
