Quantitative Relation between Conflict and Response Inhibition in the Flanker Task

Abstract

The 2001 conflict monitoring hypothesis of Botvinick and colleagues posits that the amount of conflict raised by incongruent stimuli in a flanker task affects subsequent cognitive control, such as response inhibition. The present experiment yielded empirical evidence of the quantitative relation between conflict and response inhibition. Participants judged the direction of a target arrow flanked by distractor arrows presented above and below the target. The amount of conflict was manipulated by varying the distance between the target and the directional distractors. Analysis showed that response times were longer for incongruent trials than for congruent trials, and response times on incongruent trials were longer for the small distance than for the large distance conditions. In addition, the response times in congruent trials became longer as the amount of conflict in the preceding trial increased. These results are consistent with Botvinick, et al.'s hypothesis that the conflict-detection mechanism determines the amount of response inhibition depending on the amount of conflict. Responses on incongruent trials were faster and more accurate when the preceding trial was incongruent than when it was congruent, and the size of this response facilitation was not influenced by the amount of conflict. These results suggest that the conflict detection mechanism modulates the subsequent behaviors by two forms of control which are differently affected by the amount of conflict.

Resting-state EEG power predicts conflict-related brain activity in internally guided but not in externally guided decision-making

“…3(a), longer RTs were obtained in large-conflict conditions than in small-conflict conditions for used-frequency (easy, difficult), occupation preference, and color preference judgment tasks. That result is consistent with those of previous studies (Fritzsche et al, 2010;Masaki et al, 2007;Takezawa and Miyatani, 2005). In addition, the RTs for color preference judgments look shorter than that for occupation preference judgment task.…”

“…Both in externally and internally guided decision-making, the results of RT and CRN of conflict conditions were in accordance with those of earlier studies (Bartholow et al, 2005;Masaki et al, 2007;Nakao et al, 2010a;Takezawa and Miyatani, 2005), in which the longer RT and the larger fronto-central CRN in large-conflict condition than those in smallconflict condition were demonstrated (Fig. 3).…”

“…These studies have revealed that a key regulatory process in externally guided decisionmaking is the ability to monitor and resolve conflict between correct responses and erroneous responses (Bland and Schaefer, 2011;Botvinick, 2007;Botvinick et al, 2001;Mennes et al, 2008;Smith et al, 2009;Smoski et al, 2009). Especially, event-related brain potential (ERP) reports have described that the strength of conflict between correct and error response is reflected in the amplitudes of fronto-central stimulus-locked N2 (Bartholow et al, 2005;Fritzsche et al, 2010;van Veen and Carter, 2002b;Yeung et al, 2004) and response-locked correct/conflict-related negativity (CRN) (Bartholow et al, 2005;Fritzsche et al, 2010;Masaki et al, 2007;Simon-Thomas and Knight, 2005;Vidal et al, 2003) as well as reaction times (RTs) (Fritzsche et al, 2010;Masaki et al, 2007;Takezawa and Miyatani, 2005). Both of these negative ERP components are known to originate from the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), which is thought to play a role in conflict-monitoring (Ridderinkhof et al, 2004;van Veen and Carter, 2002a;Vlamings et al, 2008;Yeung and Nieuwenhuis, 2009).…”

The influence of negative stimulus features on conflict adaption: evidence from fluency of processing

“…What we have shown here is that increasing the negative valence of conflict stimuli via disfluency (and thus independently from conflict strength) does not increase conflict adaptation effects. But at the same time, it is well documented that (1) disfluency triggers processing adjustments in terms of a reduced fluency effect (Dreisbach and Fischer, 2011) and that (2) conflict adaptation effects increase with increasing conflict strength (Takezawa and Miyatani, 2005; Forster et al, 2011; Wendt et al, 2014). Therefore, we argue that the aversive signal conveyed by the amount of conflict triggers conflict adaptation.…”

“…Questions of interest concerned the locus and specificity of the adaptation effect (e.g., Kiesel et al, 2006; Kunde and Wühr, 2006; Notebaert and Verguts, 2008; Wendt et al, 2012), the role of episodic retrieval and priming processes (e.g., Mayr et al, 2003; Hommel et al, 2004), the role of learning (e.g., Holroyd and Coles, 2002; Blais et al, 2007; Verguts and Notebaert, 2009; Blais and Verguts, 2012), timing (e.g., Goschke and Dreisbach, 2008; Scherbaum et al, 2011; Pastötter et al, 2013), conflict strength (e.g., Takezawa and Miyatani, 2005; Forster et al, 2011; Wendt et al, 2014), working memory load (Stürmer et al, 2005; Fischer et al, 2010; Soutschek et al, 2012), and context effects in general (e.g., Fischer et al, 2008; Funes et al, 2010). …”