This study used a proportion congruency manipulation in the Stroop task in order to investigate, at the behavioral and brain substrate levels, the predictions derived from the Dual Mechanisms of Control (DMC) account of two distinct modes of cognitive control depending on the task context. Three experimental conditions were created that varied the proportion congruency: mostly incongruent (MI), mostly congruent (MC), and mostly neutral (MN) contexts. A reactive control strategy, which corresponds to transient interference resolution processes after conflict detection, was expected for the rare conflicting stimuli in the MC context, and a proactive strategy, characterized by a sustained task-relevant focus prior to the occurrence of conflict, was expected in the MI context. Results at the behavioral level supported the proactive/reactive distinction, with the replication of the classic proportion congruent effect (i.e., less interference and facilitation effects in the MI context). fMRI data only partially supported our predictions. Whereas reactive control for incongruent trials in the MC context engaged the expected fronto-parietal network including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex, proactive control in the MI context was not associated with any sustained lateral prefrontal cortex activations, contrary to our hypothesis. Surprisingly, incongruent trials in the MI context elicited transient activation in common with incongruent trials in the MC context, especially in DLPFC, superior parietal lobe, and insula. This lack of sustained activity in MI is discussed in reference to the possible involvement of item-specific rather than list-wide mechanisms of control in the implementation of a high task-relevant focus.
References
[1]
Botvinick MM, Braver TS, Barch DM, Carter CS, Cohen JD (2001) Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychological Review 108: 624–652.
[2]
Kerns JG, Cohen JD, MacDonald AW, Cho RY, Stenger VA, et al. (2004) Anterior cingulate conflict monitoring and adjustments in control. Science 303: 1023–1026.
[3]
Ridderinkhof KR, Forstmann BU, Wylie SA, Burle B, van den Wildenberg WPM (2011) Neurocognitive mechanisms of action control: Resisting the call of the sirens. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 2: 174–192.
[4]
Goghari VM, MacDonald AW (2009) The neural basis of cognitive control: Response selection and inhibition. Brain and cognition 71: 72–83.
[5]
Stroop JR (1935) Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology 18: 643–662.
[6]
MacLeod CM (1991) Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin 109: 163–203.
[7]
Cohen JD, Dunbar K, McClelland JL (1990) On the control of automatic processes: A parallel distributed processing account of the Stroop effect. Psychological Review 97: 332–361.
[8]
MacLeod CM, Dunbar K (1988) Training and Stroop-like interference: Evidence for a continuum of automaticity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 14: 126–135.
[9]
Brown TL (2011) The relationship between stroop interference and facilitation effects: Statistical artifacts, baselines, and a reassessment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 37: 85–99.
[10]
MacLeod CM, MacDonald PA (2000) Interdimensional interference in the Stroop effect: Uncovering the cognitive and neural anatomy of attention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4: 383–391.
[11]
Braver TS, Gray JR, Burgess GC (2007) Explaining the many varieties of working memory variation: Dual mechanisms of cognitive control. In: Conway ARA, Jarrold C, Kane MJ, Miyake A, Towse JN, editors. pp. 76–106. New York: Oxford University Press.
[12]
Braver TS (2012) The variable nature of cognitive control: a dual mechanisms framework. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 16: 106–113.
[13]
Logan GD, Zbrodoff NJ (1979) When it helps to be misled: Facilitative effects of increasing the frequency of conflicting stimuli in a Stroop-like task. Memory & cognition 7: 166–174.
[14]
Logan GD, Zbrodoff NJ (1998) Stroop-type interference: Congruency effects in color naming with typewritten responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 24: 978–992.
[15]
Lowe DG, Mitterer JO (1982) Selective and divided attention in a Stroop task. Canadian Journal of Psychology 36: 684–700.
[16]
Bélanger S, Belleville S, Gauthier S (2010) Inhibition impairments in Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment and healthy aging: Effect of congruency proportion in a Stroop task. Neuropsychologia 48: 581–590.
[17]
Kane MJ, Engle RW (2003) Working-memory capacity and the control of attention: The contributions of goal neglect, response competition, and task set to Stroop interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 132: 47–70.
[18]
Lindsay DS, Jacoby LL (1994) Stroop process dissociations: The relationship between facilitation and interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 20: 219–234.
[19]
De Pisapia N, Braver TS (2006) A model of dual control mechanisms through anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex interactions. Neurocomputing 69: 1322–1326.
[20]
Laird AR, McMillan KM, Lancaster JL, Kochunov P, Turkeltaub PE, et al. (2005) A comparison of label-based review and ALE meta-analysis in the Stroop task. Human Brain Mapping 25: 6–21.
[21]
Nee DE, Wager TD, Jonides J (2007) Interference resolution: Insights from a meta-analysis of neuroimaging tasks. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 7: 1–17.
[22]
Roberts KL, Hall DA (2008) Examining a supramodal network for conflict processing: A systematic review and novel functional magnetic resonance imaging data for related visual and auditory stroop tasks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20: 1063–1078.
[23]
Egner T, Hirsch J (2005) The neural correlates and functional integration of cognitive control in a Stroop task. Neuroimage 24: 539–547.
[24]
Carter CS, Macdonald AM, Botvinick M, Ross LL, Stenger VA, et al. (2000) Parsing executive processes: Strategic vs. evaluative functions of the anterior cingulate cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97: 1944–1998.
[25]
Aarts E, Roelofs A (2011) Attentional control in anterior cingulate cortex based on probabilistic cueing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23: 716–727.
[26]
Botvinick MM, Cohen JD, Carter CS (2004) Conflict monitoring and anterior cingulate cortex: An update. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8: 539–546.
[27]
Rush BK, Barch DM, Braver TS (2006) Accounting for cognitive aging: Context processing, inhibition or processing speed? Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition 13: 588–610.
Braver TS, Paxton JL, Locke HS, Barch DM (2009) Flexible neural mechanisms of cognitive control within human prefrontal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106: 7351–7356.
[30]
Jimura K, Locke HS, Braver TS (2010) Prefrontal cortex mediation of cognitive enhancement in rewarding motivational contexts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107: 8871–8876.
[31]
Savine AC, Braver TS (2010) Motivated cognitive control: Reward incentives modulate preparatory neural activity during task-switching. The Journal of Neuroscience 30: 10294–10305.
[32]
Paxton JL, Barch DM, Racine CA, Braver TS (2008) Cognitive control, goal maintenance, and prefrontal function in healthy aging. Cerebral Cortex 18: 1010–1028.
[33]
Jimura K, Braver TS (2010) Age-related shifts in brain activity dynamics during task switching. Cerebral Cortex 20: 1420–1431.
[34]
Floden D, Vallesi A, Stuss DT (2011) Task context and frontal lobe activation in the Stroop task. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23: 867–879.
[35]
Deichmann R, Schwarzbauer C, Turner R (2004) Optimisation of the 3D MDEFT sequence for anatomical brain imaging: technical implications at 1.5 and 3 T. Neuroimage 21: 757–767.
[36]
Nichols T, Brett M, Andersson J, Wager T, Poline JB (2005) Valid conjunction inference with the minimum statistic. Neuroimage 25: 653–660.
[37]
Fan J, Flombaum JI, McCandliss BD, Thomas KM, Posner MI (2003) Cognitive and brain consequences of conflict. Neuroimage 18: 42–57.
[38]
Wager TD, Sylvester CYC, Lacey SC, Nee DE, Franklin M, et al. (2005) Common and unique components of response inhibition revealed by fMRI. Neuroimage 27: 323–340.
[39]
Walsh BJ, Buonocore MH, Carter CS, Mangun GR (2011) Integrating conflict detection and attentional control mechanisms. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 23: 2211–2221.
[40]
Bunge SA, Hazeltine E, Scanlon MD, Rosen AC, Gabrieli JDE (2002) Dissociable contributions of prefrontal and parietal cortices to response selection. Neuroimage 17: 1562–1571.
[41]
Kurth F, Zilles K, Fox PT, Laird AR, Eickhoff SB (2010) A link between the systems: Functional differentiation and integration within the human insula revealed by meta-analysis. Brain Structure and Function 214: 519–534.
[42]
Menon V, Uddin LQ (2010) Saliency, switching, attention and control: A network model of insula function. Brain Structure and Function 214: 655–667.
[43]
MacDonald AW, Cohen JD, Stenger VA, Carter CS (2000) Dissociating the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex in cognitive control. Science 288: 1835–1838.
[44]
Blais C, Bunge S (2010) Behavioral and neural evidence for item-specific performance monitoring. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22: 2758–2767.
[45]
Blais C, Robidoux S, Risko EF, Besner D (2007) Item-specific adaptation and the conflict-monitoring hypothesis: A computational model. Psychological Review 114: 1076–1086.
[46]
Bugg JM, Jacoby LL, Toth JP (2008) Multiple levels of control in the Stroop task. Memory & cognition 36: 1484–1494.
[47]
Bugg JM, Chanani S (2011) List-wide control is not entirely elusive: Evidence from picture–word Stroop. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 18: 930–936.
[48]
Bugg JM, McDaniel MA, Scullin MK, Braver TS (2011) Revealing list-level control in the Stroop task by uncovering its benefits and a cost. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 37: 1595–1606.
[49]
Hutchison KA (2011) The interactive effects of listwide control, item-based control, and working memory capacity on Stroop performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 37: 851–860.
