| 其他摘要 | Cognitive control is an advanced cognitive function that monitors and resolves conflict, thus helping us accomplish goal-directed behavior. An important question is whether the mechanisms of cognitive control are domain-general or domain-specific. Previous studies have extensively investigated the generality/specificity of cognitive control by using stimulus conflict and response conflict types, but the conclusions are not consistent. For this issue, some researchers suggested that conflict similarity might be an important factor that influenced the generality/specificity of cognitive control, but parametrical empirical studies were lacking. Therefore, this study investigated the influence of conflict similarity on the generality/specificity of cognitive control.
In addition, from the division of processing stages, Stroop conflict contains stimulus conflict and response conflict processing stages. Previous studies have mainly used unimodal visual stimuli to investigate the generality/specificity of cognitive control in stimulus conflict and response conflict processing stages. However, under the unimodal condition, the comparison of stimulus conflict and response conflict processing, was confounded with different processing mechanisms of attention to the same/different objects. In contrast, the using of cross-modal audiovisual stimuli has an advantage on this aspect. So far, it remains unclear whether generality/specificity of cognitive control is involved in cross-modal semantic conflict and response conflict processing. Therefore, whether generality or specificity mechanisms of cognitive control are involved in stimulus conflict and response conflict processing, is another question to be explored in this study.
This study explored the generality/specificity of cognitive control in the processing of stimulus conflict and response conflict, from two aspects of stimulus conflict and response conflict types, and of cross-modal semantic conflict and response conflict processing stages, respectively. Two studies were included.
Study 1 (Experiments 1-3) explored the generality/specificity of cognitive control between stimulus conflict and response conflict types. In the experiment 1，We added a compound condition which contains two conflict types to the classical Simon-Stroop paradigm. In the experiments 2 and 3, the polar angle and the Euclidean distance of the target arrow were parametrically manipulated to change the size of conflict similarity, respectively. We used congruency sequence effect (CSE) to examine the transferability and degree of transferability of cognitive control. Results found that the conflict similarity positively modulated the magnitudes of cross-conflict CSE. The results indicating that cognitive control was not generality or specificity (all or none), and conflict similarity affected the degree of transferability of cognitive control, which supported the integrative learning account of cognitive control.
Study 2 (experiments 4-6) used the audiovisual 2-1 mapping Stroop paradigm to investigate the generality/specificity of cognitive control in the processing stages of stimulus conflict and response conflict. In the Experiment 4, we examined the interactions between Stroop stimulus conflict, response conflict and Simon conflict in the same task. Results showed that there were no interactions between Stroop semantic conflict, response conflict and Simon conflict, indicating that different processing stages of Stroop and Simon were processed independently. In the Experiment 5, we manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between auditory and visual stimuli, to investigate whether same or different theta oscillation mechanisms were involved in cross-modal stimulus conflict and response conflict processing, by using behavioral oscillatory analyses method. Results showed that in the auditory task, theta oscillation was only found in response conflict, while in the visual task, theta oscillation was only found in stimulus conflict. In the Experiment 6, we used EEG to investigate whether
same or different time courses and neural oscillations were involved in stimulus conflict and response conflict processing. Results showed that, in the auditory task, stimulus conflict enhanced frontal-central N450 amplitude, and both the stimulus conflict and response conflict reduced the amplitude of parietal P3; in the visual task, stimulus conflict enhanced the frontal N2 amplitude, while response conflict enhanced posterior parietal N450 amplitude. In addition, in the auditory task, response conflict enhanced theta power over the medial prefrontal cortex (MFC), and the resolution of response conflict was accompanied by enhanced theta phase synchronization between the MFC and lateral frontal areas, as well as the motor area; in the visual task, stimulus conflict enhanced theta power over MFC. These results indicated that the conflict monitoring mechanisms of cross-modal stimulus conflict and response conflict were specific (frontal-central/posterior parietal N450, N2), and stimulus conflict and response conflict had both the same (P3) and different (theta phase synchronization between brain areas) conflict resolution mechanisms. In addition, the neural findings of the theta oscillations over MFC verified the results of the behavioral oscillation. Both found theta oscillations of stimulus conflict and response conflict were specific, and the stage which theta oscillation occurred was influenced by the processing modal of task-relevant stimuli.
In conclusion, this study found that the generality/specificity of cognitive control was not absolute: at the behavioral level, the generality/specificity of cognitive control was influenced by the similarity between stimulus conflict and response conflict; at the neural level, the conflict monitoring process of cognitive control was specific, while the conflict resolution process had both general and specific mechanisms. These findings extended the generality/specificity theory of cognitive control. |
修改评论