Stimulus conflict triggers behavioral avoidance

Abstract

According to a recent extension of the conflictmonitoring theory, conflict between two competing response tendencies is registered as an aversive event and triggers a motivation to avoid the source of conflict. In the present study, we tested this assumption. Over five experiments, we examined whether conflict is associated with an avoidance motivation and whether stimulus conflict or response conflict triggers an avoidance tendency. Participants first performed a color Stroop task. In a subsequent motivation test, participants responded to Stroop stimuli with approach-and avoidancerelated lever movements. These results showed that Stroopconflict stimuli increased the frequency of avoidance responses in a free-choice motivation test, and also increased the speed of avoidance relative to approach responses in a forced-choice test. High and low proportions of response conflict in the Stroop task had no effect on avoidance in the motivation test. Avoidance of conflict was, however, obtained even with new conflict stimuli that had not been presented before in a Stroop task, and when the Stroop task was replaced with an unrelated filler task. Taken together, these results suggest that stimulus conflict is sufficient to trigger avoidance.

Conflict-driven adaptive control is enhanced by integral negative emotion on a short time scale

“…The observation that conflict adaptation is modulated by the length of the ITI is not odd, but accords well with previous studies in the literature: the CAE is usually most pronounced using short ITIs and tends to decay sharply when using longer intervals Alternatively, the implementation of enhanced conflict-driven adjustment during the encounter of integral negative emotion could be regarded as a form of emotion regulation (Dignath & Eder, 2015;Dreisbach & Fischer, 2015), as opposed to cognitive control per se. Although remaining largely speculative at this stage, it is feasible that this enhanced adaptive control triggered by integral negative emotion at a short ITI might reflect a compensatory mechanism, whereby participants would actively try to reduce these negative experiences or feelings in this condition (Gyurak, Gross, & Etkin, 2011;Dignath & Eder, 2015;Inzlicht et al, 2015;Schouppe, De Houwer, Ridderinkhof, & Notebaert, 2012). Such an interpretation accords well with the affect alarm model of self-control, in which negative information can be viewed as adaptive to some extent (i.e., when low to mild doses of negative emotion are used with healthy participants), acting like a guiding signal that there is something wrong happening in the environment somehow, and an adjustment or compensation is therefore timely required to overcome (and change) this feeling (Inzlicht, Bartholow, & Hirsh, 2013;.…”

Reappraising cognitive control: normal reactive adjustments following conflict processing are abolished by proactive emotion regulation

“…Therefore, besides the context defined by the frequency of incongruent trials and the use of evaluative feedback to reinforce it (or the lack thereof), inter-individual differences in specific dispositions, here with a focus on emotion regulation and more specifically reappraisal eventually combined to determine the engagement of proactive vs. reactive control strategies to deal with conflict (Braver et al, 2007). More generally, our new results are compatible with recent data and models available in the literature arguing that emotion regulation, besides conflict processing per se, can dynamically influence CC (Dignath & Eder, 2015;Dreisbach & Fischer, 2015). In this context, it appears therefore important to consider and model carefully inter-individual differences in emotion regulation, or other dispositions, when exploring this fundamental process as they appear to influence it substantially (see also Braver, 2012;Braver, Cole, & Yarkoni, 2010;Egner, 2011).…”

“…Negative emotion might provide another source triggering enhanced control adjustments, given the close ties between 7 defensive motivation and CC (Inzlicht et al, 2015). From this affective perspective, it is reasonable to conceive that conflict-driven adaptive control processes could be regarded as a form of emotion regulation to some extent (Dignath & Eder, 2015;Dreisbach & Fischer, 2015). According to a dominant model in the affective sciences literature (Gross, 2002), emotion regulation can be divided into different processes or strategies, including suppression and cognitive reappraisal.…”

The Role of Anterior Cingulate Cortex in the Affective Evaluation of Conflict

“…In the wake of Botvinick (2007)’s proposal, a growing number of behavioral studies confirmed its first assumption, namely that cognitive conflicts appear to be experienced as aversive events (Brouillet, Ferrier, Grosselin, & Brouillet, 2011; Dignath & Eder, 2015; Dreisbach & Fischer, 2012; Fritz & Dreisbach, 2013, 2015; Schouppe et al, 2012; 2015; for a review, see Dreisbach & Fischer, 2015). For example, Dreisbach and Fischer (2012) investigated this by combining a classic color Stroop task (Stroop, 1935) with an affective priming paradigm (Fazio, 2001).…”