Conflict adaptation in the perception of emotional valence in a Stroop task

摘要

Interference effects are commonly observed when conflicts arise between task-relevant and task-irrelevant dimensions of stimuli. Compared with responses to congruent trials in which the two dimensions are compatible, responses to incongruent trials are usually slower and less accurate. Moreover, the performance in a given trial is affected by the nature of the preceding trial, in that the interference effect for the current incongruent trial is reduced when it follows an incongruent trial than when it follows a congruent one. This conflict adaptation effect has been generally ascribed to the functioning of the cognitive control system, in which higher controls are recruited after conflicts to further constrain the processing of the task-irrelevant dimension. However, due to its uniqueness in neural and cognitive processes, whether the perception of emotional valence shows the same conflict adaptation effect in the conflicting context is an open question. This study adopted a variant of the Stroop task in which the task-relevant dimension was the affective facial expression while the task-irrelevant dimension was the meaning of an emotional word superimposed on the face. Results suggest that the perception of emotional valence in the conflicting context can have aspects that are both similar and dissimilar to the control of conflict for non-emotional information. The capturing of attention by emotional information can alter the functioning of the cognitive control system.