Washington University in St. Louis.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2014 Mar;40(2):567-87. doi: 10.1037/a0035032. Epub 2013 Nov 25.
The conflict monitoring account posits that globally high levels of conflict trigger engagement of top-down control; however, recent findings point to the mercurial nature of top-down control in high conflict contexts. The current study examined the potential moderating effect of associative learning on conflict-triggered top-down control engagement by testing the Associations as Antagonists to Top-Down Control (AATC) hypothesis. In 4 experiments, list-wide proportion congruence was manipulated, and conflict-triggered top-down control engagement was examined by comparing interference for frequency-matched, 50% congruent items across mostly congruent (low conflict) and mostly incongruent (high conflict) lists. Despite the fact that global levels of conflict were varied identically across experiments, evidence of conflict-triggered top-down control engagement was selective to those experiments in which responses could not be predicted on the majority of trials via simple associative learning, consistent with the AATC hypothesis. In a 5th experiment, older adults showed no evidence of top-down control engagement under conditions in which young adults did, a finding that refined the interpretation of the patterns observed in the prior experiments. Collectively, these findings suggest that top-down control engagement in high conflict contexts is neither the default mode nor an unused (or nonexistent) strategy. Top-down control is best characterized as a last resort that is engaged when reliance on one's environment, and in particular associative responding, is unproductive for achieving task goals.
冲突监测假说认为，全球范围内高水平的冲突会引发自上而下的控制的参与；然而，最近的研究结果表明，在高冲突情境中，自上而下的控制具有易变性。本研究通过检验关联作为自上而下控制的拮抗剂（Associations as Antagonists to Top-Down Control，AATC）假说，检验了联想学习对冲突引发的自上而下控制参与的潜在调节作用。在 4 个实验中，我们操纵了列表级别的比例一致性，并通过比较高一致性（低冲突）和低一致性（高冲突）列表中频率匹配、50%一致性项目的干扰来检验冲突引发的自上而下控制参与。尽管在所有实验中，全球冲突水平都被一致地改变，但冲突引发的自上而下控制参与的证据仅针对那些在大多数试验中无法通过简单联想学习预测反应的实验，这与 AATC 假说一致。在第 5 个实验中，老年人在年轻成年人表现出自上而下控制参与的条件下没有表现出这种参与，这一发现细化了对之前实验中观察到的模式的解释。总的来说，这些发现表明，在高冲突情境中，自上而下的控制参与既不是默认模式，也不是未被使用（或不存在）的策略。自上而下的控制最好被描述为一种最后的手段，当依赖于环境，特别是联想反应，对实现任务目标没有效果时，就会被采用。
