Does conflict control occur without awareness? Evidence from an ERP study

Abstract

The relationship between conflict control and awareness has attracted extensive interest. Although researchers have investigated the relationship between response conflict and awareness, it still remains unclear whether stimulus conflict can occur outside of awareness. In addition, previous studies on the role of awareness in conflict control have ignored the fact that conflict control includes both conflict detection and resolution. A modified version of the flanker task was used to manipulate stimulus and response conflicts under both masked and unmasked conditions. The masked condition elicited a sequence of distinct event-related potential components that were also observed in the unmasked condition. N2 amplitudes presented the following pattern: incongruent-eligible>incongruent-ineligible>congruent, they did not show any difference under the masked and unmasked conditions, suggesting that detection of stimulus-related conflict revealed by the comparison between incongruent-ineligible and congruent trials, and response-related conflict revealed by the comparison between incongruent-eligible and incongruent-ineligible trials can occur in the absence of awareness, and unconscious conflict detection might involve the same neural network employed for conscious conflict detection. Late positive component (LPC) amplitudes also presented as incongruent-eligible>incongruent-ineligible>congruent at CPz and Pz, irrespective of conscious awareness. However, LPC amplitudes under the masked condition were markedly reduced compared to unmasked trials. These LPC findings suggest that stimulus- and response-related conflict resolution can occur in the absence of awareness; furthermore, unconscious conflict resolution might involve a weaker cognitive control network compared to conscious conflict resolution. These findings have important implications for the theories concerning the relationship between cognitive control and awareness.