Inhibition of automatic response activation due to monitoring of conflict intensity

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between conflict and the inhibition of automatic response activation. Fourteen participants selectively responded to the ink color of word stimuli (‘left’ and ‘right’). Task-irrelevant features of the stimuli (presentation location and word meaning) were either congruent or incongruent with the response location. Three stimulus conditions di#ered in terms of their degree of conflict: in the non-conflict condition, both taskirrelevant features were congruent with response location; in the low-conflict condition, word meaning conflicted with response location; and in the high-conflict condition, both word meaning and presentation location conflicted with response location. In the non-conflict condition with facilitation due to automatic correct response activation, reaction times increased as the level of conflict increased in the preceding trial. In the high-conflict condition with automatic error response activation, error rates were lower as the level of conflict increased in the preceding trial. These results indicate that the process of conflict monitoring modulates inhibition due to automatic response activation according to the degree of conflict.