title: Contextual within-trial adaptation of cognitive control: Evidence from the combination of conflict tasks.
abstract: It is assumed that we recruit cognitive control (i.e., attentional adjustment and/or inhibition) to resolve 2 conflicts at a time, such as driving toward a red traffic light and taking care of a near-by ambulance car. A few studies have addressed this issue by combining a Simon task (that required responding with left or right key-press to a stimulus presented on the left or right side of the screen) with either a Stroop task (that required identifying the color of color words) or a Flanker task (that required identifying the target character among flankers). In most studies, the results revealed no interaction between the conflict tasks. However, these studies include a small stimulus set, and participants might have learned the stimulus-response mappings for each stimulus. Thus, it is possible that participants have more relied on episodic memory than on cognitive control to perform the task. In 5 experiments, we combined the 3 tasks pairwise, and we increased the stimulus set size to circumvent episodic memory contributions. The results revealed an interaction between the conflict tasks: Irrespective of task combination, the congruency effect of 1 task was smaller when the stimulus was incongruent for the other task. This suggests that when 2 conflicts are presented concurrently, the control processes induced by 1 conflict source can affect the control processes induced by the other conflict source. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology Unit, University of Zurich.
authors.forename: Alodie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rey-Mermet
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Cognitive Psychology Unit, University of Zurich.
authors.forename: Miriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gade
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D057190:Stroop Test; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult