title: Interocular suppression prevents interference in a flanker task.
abstract: Executive control of attention refers to processes that detect and resolve conflict among competing thoughts and actions. Despite the high-level nature of this faculty, the role of awareness in executive control of attention is not well understood. In this study, we used interocular suppression to mask the flankers in an arrow flanker task, in which the flankers and the target arrow were presented simultaneously in order to elicit executive control of attention. Participants were unable to detect the flanker arrows or to reliably identify their direction when masked. There was a typical conflict effect (prolonged reaction time and increased error rate under flanker-target incongruent condition compared to congruent condition) when the flanker arrows were unmasked, while the conflict effect was absent when the flanker arrows were masked with interocular suppression. These results suggest that blocking awareness of competing stimuli with interocular suppression prevents the involvement of executive control of attention.
authors: Department of Psychology, Peking University , Beijing, China.
authors: Qiong
authors: Q
authors: Wu
authors: The Graduate Center, City University of New York , New York, NY, USA ; Department of Psychology, Queens College, City University of New York , Queens, NY, USA.
authors: Jonathan T H
authors: JT
authors: Lo Voi
authors: Department of Psychology, Queens College, City University of New York , Queens, NY, USA.
authors: Thomas Y
authors: TY
authors: Lee
authors: The Graduate Center, City University of New York , New York, NY, USA ; Department of Psychology, Queens College, City University of New York , Queens, NY, USA.
authors: Melissa-Ann
authors: MA
authors: Mackie
authors: Department of Psychology, Peking University , Beijing, China ; Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University , Beijing, China ; Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University , Beijing, China.
authors: Yanhong
authors: Y
authors: Wu
authors: The Graduate Center, City University of New York , New York, NY, USA ; Department of Psychology, Queens College, City University of New York , Queens, NY, USA ; Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai , New York, NY, USA ; Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai , New York, NY, USA.
authors: Jin
authors: J
authors: Fan
keywords: conflict effect; consciousness awareness; continuous flash suppression; executive control of attention; flanker task