Transient and sustained cognitive control modulates task-irrelevant process

Abstract

In the cognitive conflict task, transient and sustained contexts modulate the congruency effect. Transient modulation is the effect of preceding trial types, while sustained modulation is the effect of context in an experimental block. The present study was conducted with two aims: The first was to reveal which processes, a task-relevant one and a task-irrelevant one, are changed by these contexts, and the second was to reveal the difference between the transient and the sustained modulations. The results of two experiments suggested that, although both transient and sustained modulations occurred during the task-irrelevant process, these modulations may be different in nature. Transient modulation was caused by just an inhibition in using task-irrelevant information, while sustained modulation showed a newly started use of task-irrelevant information as a result of the participants' re-adaptation to the context. © Japanese Psychological Association 2012.