Kałamała Patrycja, Ociepka Michał, Chuderski Adam
Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Krakow, Poland; Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Krakow, Poland.
Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Krakow, Poland.
Cortex. 2020 Oct;131:151-163. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.07.012. Epub 2020 Aug 11.
People often have to resolve many conflicts at the same time in their everyday lives. So far, the mechanisms of conflict resolution when multiple conflicts co-occur are not clear. This study examined the neurocognitive mechanisms of cognitive-control adaptation when two sources of conflict co-occur. To this aim, we measured event-related potentials in a task combining the Stroop conflict (the meaning and the color of a word differ) and the word-word conflict (two different words are presented). The word-word conflict was expected to tap the same stage of stimuli processing (i.e., semantics) and to modulate the magnitude of the Stroop conflict. Behavioral data showed that the word-word conflict facilitated the resolution of the Stroop conflict, which indicates the within-trial adaptation of cognitive control. ERP data showed two additive effects (the Stroop conflict and the word-word conflict) in the N450 time window, which suggests that at the neural level these two conflicts were processed in parallel (simultaneously and independently of each other). The N450 finding demonstrates that the control system flexibly and rapidly adapts to different types of conflict by modulating information processing in ways that individually address each source of conflict. Crucially, processing the conflicts in parallel substantially improved the efficiency of the control system. Overall, the study shows that the cognitive-control system can act as a collection of parallel but independent mechanisms; it thereby advances our understanding of goal-directed behavior.
人们在日常生活中常常需要同时解决许多冲突。到目前为止，多种冲突同时发生时的冲突解决机制尚不清楚。本研究考察了两种冲突源同时出现时认知控制适应的神经认知机制。为此，我们在一项结合了斯特鲁普冲突（单词的含义与颜色不同）和单词-单词冲突（呈现两个不同的单词）的任务中测量了事件相关电位。单词-单词冲突预计会影响刺激处理的同一阶段（即语义），并调节斯特鲁普冲突的程度。行为数据表明，单词-单词冲突促进了斯特鲁普冲突的解决，这表明了认知控制在试验内的适应性。ERP数据在N450时间窗口显示出两种相加效应（斯特鲁普冲突和单词-单词冲突），这表明在神经层面上，这两种冲突是并行处理的（同时且相互独立）。N450的研究结果表明，控制系统通过以分别处理每个冲突源的方式调节信息处理，灵活快速地适应不同类型的冲突。至关重要的是，并行处理冲突大大提高了控制系统的效率。总体而言，该研究表明认知控制系统可以作为一组并行但独立的机制发挥作用；从而推进了我们对目标导向行为的理解。
