Nonconditional Feedback Selectively Eliminates Conflict Adaption
Henrik Singmann [email protected]
Introduction
• Congruency effects in selective attention tasks are subject to
sequential modulation: They are smaller following an incongruent
stimulus than following a congruent one. This congruency
sequence effect has been interpreted as reflecting conflict-driven
adjustments in cognitive control (= conflict adaptation; Botvinick et
al., 2001).
• Following the idea that the negative affective quality of perceived
conflict triggers conflict adaption, Van Steenbergen, Band, &
Hommel (2009) showed that noncontingent positive feedback after
trials, but not negative or neutral feedback, eliminated the conflict
adaption effect in a flanker paradigm (i.e., the flanker congruency
effect was unaffected by the congruency of the previous trial).
• Replicating Steenbergen et al. (2009) we failed to find differential
effects of affective feedback. Instead, conflict adaption effects
were eliminated under all feedback conditions, but selectively for a
flanker conflict (as in Steenbergen et al.’s study), andnot for other
conflicts (i.e., SNARC & Simon), indicating that it is not the affective
quality of the conflict that eliminates conflict adaption.
Methods
38 participants performed a parity judgment task with 784 trials.
Stimuli: Digits (2 – 9); flankers were single digits (e.g., 686) and differed from target.
Position of stimulus was shifted to left or right (inner flanker always in screen center).
Task: Participants had to judge the parity of the central digit within 1000 ms.
Feedback: A random feedback indicated monetary gain/loss/no change (20 cents).
Quantity: 7 blocks à 112 Trials. Slightly more incongruent flanker trials (57% vs. 43%).
3 Conflict Dimensions (congruent = C; incongruent = I):
Flanker: Target and flankers can have the same (= C; 686) or differing parities (= I; 676).
SNARC: Congruent if target digit is smaller (bigger) than 5 and expected response is
left (right). Incongruent in the other cases (e.g., target bigger 5, response left).
Simon: Position of stimulus could correspond to expected response (= C) or not (= I).
Schematic Sequence of each Trial
838

or
fixation dot:
500 ms
+
o
-
blank ITI:
150 ms
838
random monetary
gain or loss: 500 ms
stimulus: max 1000 ms
t
Results
• Before analyses we excluded first 3 trials of each block (2.7%),
response omissions (0.6%), trials following error/response omission
(11.7%), trials exceeding indiv. median +/- 1.5 * interquartile range
(2.5%). MRT = 489 ms (363 – 609 ms), MER = 10.9% (3.9% – 32.1%)
• Two ANOVAs (one for RT, one for ER) for each conflict dimension
(feedback × previous conflict × current conflict) revealed no
485
460
congruent
incongruent
previous trial
510
Simon Conflict
response time (ms)
510
SNARC Conflict
response time (ms)
response time (ms)
Flanker Conflict
interaction of feedback with the conflict adaption effects: All 3-way
interactions were not significant, Fs < 1.8, ps > .19.
• Despite finding a substantial flanker effect (33 ms, 9%, ps < .001),
we did not find a flanker conflict adaption effect, Fs < 1.
• We found congruency (SNARC: 9ms, 4%; Simon: 8ms, 2%) and
conflict adaption effects for SNARC and Simon conflict, ps < .015.
485
460
congruent
incongruent
previous trial
510
current trial:
485
460
congruent
incongruent
previous trial
Summary
• We found a behavioral dissociation of different conflict adaption
mechanisms: Nonconditional feedback eliminated conflict
adaption for a flanker conflict. However, for two different conflict
dimensions we observed conflict adaption effects.
• We speculate that processing of nonconditional feedback occupies
(perceptual) resources necessary for flanker conflict adaption.
Conflict adaption for the other two conflict dimensions needs
other (spatial) resources which were not occupied by processing
the feedback. Therefore, we draw two conclusions:
1. Conflict adaption is performed by multiple domain specific
control mechanisms which can operate in parallel (Egner, 2007).
2. Conflict adaption needs specific (working-memory) resources.
When these resources are occupied no conflict-adaption
emerges.
References
Botvinivck, M. M. , Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict Monitoring and Cognitive Control. Psychological Review, 108(3), 624- 652.
van Steenbergen, H., Band, G. P. H., & Hommel, B. (2009). Reward counteracts conflict adaptation: Evidence for a role of affect in executive control. Psychological Science, 20, 1473-1477.
Egner T. (2008). Multiple conflict-driven control mechanisms in the human brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 374-80.
Poster presented at the ESCOP Summer School in Computational and Mathematical Modeling of Cognition, Mallnitz, July 2010