Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Regensburg, Universitätsstraße 31,D-93053 Regensburg, Germany.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2013 Jun;13(2):311-7. doi: 10.3758/s13415-012-0147-1.
Botvinick, Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 7:356-366 (2007) recently suggested that competing theories of the monitoring function of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) for cognitive control might converge on the detection of aversive signals in general, implying that response conflicts, a known trigger of ACC activation, are aversive, too. Recent evidence showing conflict priming (i.e., faster responses to negative targets after conflict primes) directly supports this notion but remains inconclusive with regard to possible confounds with processing fluency. To this end, two experiments were conducted to offer more compelling evidence for the negative valence of conflicts. Participants were primed by (conflict and nonconflict) Stroop stimuli and subsequently had to judge the valence of neutral German words (Experiment 1a) or Chinese pictographs (Experiment 1b). Results showed that conflict, as compared with nonconflict, primes led to more negative judgments of subsequently presented neutral target stimuli. The findings will be discussed in the light of existing theories of action control highlighting the role of aversive signals for sequential processing adjustments.
博特温尼克等人在 2007 年的《认知、情感和行为神经科学》杂志第 7 卷第 356-366 页中指出，用于认知控制的前扣带皮层（ACC）监测功能的竞争理论可能会集中于一般的厌恶性信号检测，这意味着众所周知的 ACC 激活触发因素——反应冲突也是厌恶性的。最近的证据表明冲突启动（即，在冲突启动后对负性目标的反应更快）直接支持了这一观点，但对于与处理流畅性的可能混淆，仍存在不确定性。为此，进行了两项实验，以提供更有力的证据证明冲突具有负性效价。参与者被（冲突和非冲突）斯特鲁普刺激启动，随后必须判断中性德语单词（实验 1a）或中文象形文字（实验 1b）的效价。结果表明，与非冲突相比，冲突启动会导致随后呈现的中性目标刺激的负面判断更多。研究结果将根据强调厌恶性信号对序列处理调整作用的现有行动控制理论进行讨论。
