The conflict adaptation is affected by attentional strategies: evidence from the arrow flanker task.

Abstract

Recently, several studies have considered factors affecting the occurrence of congruency sequence effect (CSE) in the arrow flanker task. In the present study, the influence of the following factors was examined: the presentation of a fixation and the intertrial interval (ITI) were considered. Results of the study showed that the CSE was significant when there was no fixation and when the ITI was long for response repetitions and response changes, but disappeared for response change trials in other conditions. These results showed that, even in the arrow flanker task, the conflict adaptation effect did contribute to the CSE. The current results suggested that the conflict adaptation effect in the arrow flanker task was based on the appropriate application of attention strategies.