Stimulus- and response-conflict-induced cognitive control in the flanker task

Abstract

Recently, several studies have been conducted to investigate the top-down adjustments made after incongruent trials during conflict tasks. In the present study, we investigated conflict monitoring with different types of conflict. In a modified version of the flanker task, a distinction was made between stimulus-stimulus conflict and stimulus-response conflict. Six colors were mapped to three responses in order to exclude all sequences in which a relevant or an irrelevant stimulus- or response-related feature was repeated from trial n-1 to trial n. An analysis of the effect of the congruency of the previous trial demonstrated that conflict adaptation was present. The stimulus congruency effect was reduced after both a stimulus-incongruent trial and a response-incongruent trial. The response congruency effect did not vary as a function of previous congruency. These findings are discussed in relation to the distinction between conflict detection and conflict regulation.