13:30 - 15:00
Wed-P14-Poster III-1
Wed-Poster III-1
Room: P14
Adaptive control when responding to colors and words of Stroop stimuli with temporally separated target and distractor components
Wed-P14-Poster III-103
Presented by: Kristin Prehn
Kristin Prehn 1, 2, Mike Wendt 1, 2
1 Department of Psychology, Medical School Hamburg, Am Kaiserkai 1, 20457, Hamburg, Germany, 2 ICAN Institute for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Medical School Hamburg, Am Kaiserkai 1, 20457, Hamburg, Germany
Task switching often features reversal of target and distractor stimulus dimensions, such as when switching from the Stroop task (i.e., target: color, distractor: word) to word identification (i.e., target: word, distractor: color). Enhanced task-switching costs after incongruent compared to congruent predecessor trials have been attributed to Dimension Negative Priming (DNP; i.e., inhibition of processing of the interfering stimulus dimension). In single task contexts, the Stroop effect tends to be lower after incongruent than after congruent trials. This Congruency Sequence Effect (CSE) has frequently been found in conflict tasks and is widely attributed to conflict adaptation (i.e., conflict-induced adjustment of attentional weights for target and distractor information). In priming procedures, involving successive presentation of distractors and targets, this adaptation is conceived of as Temporal Order Control (TOC; i.e., reduced processing of the stimulus occurring at the temporal position of the distractor after incongruent trials). We investigated TOC and DNP when participants responded to Stroop stimuli with temporally separated distractor and target components. On each trial, a colored string of Xs and a color word (in neutral white) were presented in varying orders. The stimulus presented first (second) acted as distractor (target). Task instructions did not suggest interpreting the situation as involving two different tasks. Applying a “confound-minimized design” yielded performance costs after incongruent trials, when target and distractor dimensions were switched, as well as a CSE, which was not modulated by repetition/switch of target and distractor dimensions from the preceding trial. These results suggest simultaneous occurrence of DNP and TOC.
Keywords: Stroop, adaptive control, task switching