Burle Borís, Spieser Laure, Servant Mathieu, Hasbroucq Thierry
Aix-Marseille Université & CNRS, Marseille, France,
Psychon Bull Rev. 2014 Aug;21(4):1003-10. doi: 10.3758/s13423-013-0561-6.
In conflict tasks, the irrelevant stimulus attribute needs to be suppressed for the correct response to be produced. In the Simon task, earlier researchers have proposed that this suppression is the reason that, after an initial increase, the interference effect decreases for longer RTs, as reflected by late, negative-going delta plots. This view has been challenged by observations of positive-going delta plots, even for long RTs, in other conflict tasks, despite a similar necessity for suppression. For late negative-going delta plots to be interpreted as reflecting suppression, a necessary, although maybe not sufficient, condition is that similar patterns should be observed for other conflict tasks. We reasoned that a similar suppression could be present, but hidden, in the Eriksen flanker task. By recording and analyzing electromyograms of the muscles involved in response execution, we could compute delta plots separately for trials that elicited a subthreshold incorrect response activation (partial error). Late negative-going delta plots were observable on partial-error trials, although they were weaker than for the Simon task, reducing the impact of this inversion on the overall distribution. We further showed that this pattern is modulated by time pressure. Those results indicate that mechanisms leading to negative-going delta plots, similar to those observed in the Simon task, are also at play in the Eriksen task. The link between negative-going delta plots and executive online control is discussed.
在冲突任务中,为了产生正确反应,无关刺激属性需要被抑制。在西蒙任务中,早期研究人员提出,这种抑制是在最初增加之后干扰效应对于更长反应时(RTs)会降低的原因,如后期的负向增量图所反映的那样。尽管其他冲突任务中也有类似的抑制需求,但正向增量图的观察结果对这一观点提出了挑战,即使是对于长反应时的情况。要将后期的负向增量图解释为反映抑制,一个必要条件(尽管可能不充分)是在其他冲突任务中应观察到类似的模式。我们推断,在埃里克森侧抑制任务中可能存在类似的抑制,但被隐藏了。通过记录和分析反应执行过程中涉及的肌肉的肌电图,我们可以分别针对引发阈下错误反应激活(部分错误)的试验计算增量图。在部分错误试验中可观察到后期的负向增量图,尽管它们比西蒙任务中的要弱,从而降低了这种反转对总体分布的影响。我们进一步表明,这种模式受时间压力的调节。这些结果表明,导致负向增量图的机制,类似于在西蒙任务中观察到的那些机制,在埃里克森任务中也起作用。文中讨论了负向增量图与执行性在线控制之间的联系。