Reconciling cognitive-control and episodic-retrieval accounts of sequential conflict modulation: Binding of control-states into event-files.

Abstract

How do we manage to shield our goals against distraction? Traditionally, this ability has been attributed to top-down cognitive control, which is assumed to monitor for and intervene in case of response conflicts. However, this account has been challenged by episodic-retrieval views, which attribute sequential modulations of conflict effects to bottom-up memory for stimulus and response features. Here we tested a new theory suggesting that that control and retrieval accounts are no alternatives but, rather, 2 sides of the same coin. According to this view, the control parameter can become stored in event files, together with stimulus, response, and context codes, so that cognitive control operations, independently from the stimulus-response codes the operate on, can come under mnemonic control. Using a novel design that eliminates any stimulus and response binding and at the same time disentangles conflict and retrieval of control states, we provide the strongest evidence to date that abstract control parameters are stored into trial-specific event files. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).