Mississippi State University, P.O. Box 6161, Mississippi State, MS, 39762, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2021 Feb;83(2):685-699. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02166-0. Epub 2020 Nov 5.
Several experimental paradigms are purported to measure response conflict, including the Stroop, Simon, and Eriksen flanker tasks. Although these tasks are often treated as being similar, delta plot analyses of response time distributions have revealed marked differences across them. Several theories have been proposed to explain these differences, however, assessing their veracity is difficult given the numerous differences across tasks. To explore what might cause delta plots to differ in a more controlled manner, here stimulus materials were manipulated across four Eriksen flanker tasks. The results reveal substantially different delta plot shapes for different stimuli: positive-going functions when color or motion served as the target and flankers, and delta plots with negative-going components when stimuli were arrows or orientated gratings. These results cast doubt on the proposal that negative-going delta plots occur only when spatial location serves as the interfering stimulus dimension. Moreover, because targets and flankers were always of the same stimulus type, the results also suggest that differences in materials across the relevant and irrelevant dimensions do not determine delta plot shapes. Instead, we propose that the delta plot shape is determined by several factors, including how early the interfering information is processed in the visual cortex.
几种实验范式被认为可以测量反应冲突，包括斯特鲁普、西蒙和艾瑞克森侧翼任务。尽管这些任务通常被视为相似的，但对反应时分布的 delta 图分析揭示了它们之间的明显差异。已经提出了几种理论来解释这些差异，然而，由于任务之间存在许多差异，评估它们的真实性是很困难的。为了更有控制地探索可能导致 delta 图不同的原因，这里在四个艾瑞克森侧翼任务中操纵了刺激材料。结果表明，不同的刺激会产生明显不同的 delta 图形状：当颜色或运动作为目标和侧翼时，是正的 delta 图形状，而当刺激是箭头或定向光栅时，delta 图形状则有负的成分。这些结果对负向 delta 图仅在空间位置作为干扰刺激维度时出现的观点提出了质疑。此外，由于目标和侧翼总是属于同一刺激类型，结果还表明，相关和不相关维度的材料差异并不决定 delta 图形状。相反，我们提出 delta 图形状由几个因素决定，包括干扰信息在视觉皮层中被处理的时间。
