Citation

Hubbard J, Kuhns D, Schäfer TA, Mayr U. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 2016; 43(3): 385-393.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/xlm0000306

PMID

27656869

Abstract

Conflict-adaptation effects (i.e., reduced response-time costs on high-conflict trials following high-conflict trials) supposedly represent our cognitive system's ability to regulate itself according to current processing demands. However, currently it is not clear whether these effects reflect conflict-triggered, active regulation, or passive carry-over of previous-trial control settings. We used eye movements to examine whether the degree of conflict modulates conflict-adaptation effects, as the conflict-triggered regulation view predicts. Across 2 experiments in which participants had to identify a target stimulus based on an endogenous cue while-on conflict trials-having to resist a sudden-onset distractor, we found a clear indication of conflict adaptation. This adaptation effect disappeared however, when participants inadvertently fixated the sudden-onset distractor on the previous trial-that is, when they experienced a high degree of conflict. This pattern of results suggests that conflict adaptation can be explained parsimoniously in terms of a broader memory process that retains recently adopted control settings across trials. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Language: en