Abstract
Previous research demonstrated that cognitive conflict could induce an affective priming effect, and the stage (detection/resolution) of conflict processing led to different directions (positive/negative) of the affective priming effect. We suggested that rewards play a critical role in the affective priming effect on conflict resolution. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs), using the arrow flanker task as primes and choosing specific affective words as targets to investigate the affective priming effect induced by cognitive conflict during the resolution stage. Our question was whether rewards created a modulating effect. Participants were asked to judge the congruency of the prime stimuli and then evaluate the valence of the target words. For behavioral results, the conflict effect was significant, and the reward promoted the behavioral performance of participants. For ERP results, enhanced N2 amplitudes for incongruent primes indicated a significant conflict effect. More importantly, as expected, in the rewarded condition, the enhanced N400 amplitudes for positive targets following incongruent primes were found, indicating a positive priming effect. However, in the unrewarded condition, the reduced N400 amplitudes for positive targets following incongruent primes were found, indicating conflict resolution hindered the processing of positive stimuli. These findings suggested that cognitive conflict-induced the positive priming effect during the resolution stage and that rewards had a moderating effect on the positive priming effect.
Highlights
Cognitive control refers to the ability to focus on goal-directed information and ignore goal-interfered information (Botvinick et al, 2001)
The RTs for incongruent primes (M = 340 ms, SD = 82.69) were significantly longer than those for congruent primes (M = 306 ms, SD = 102.97), t(31) = −4.260, p < 0.001 (Figure 3B). These results showed that the arrow Flanker task induced a significant conflict effect
The accuracy rate of the Flanker task had a significant difference between the congruent condition and incongruent condition
Summary
Cognitive control refers to the ability to focus on goal-directed information and ignore goal-interfered information (Botvinick et al, 2001). If the goal-directed information is inconsistent with the goal-interfered information, the cognitive conflict is induced. The Stroop (Stroop, 1935) and Flanker paradigm (Eriksen and Eriksen, 1974) are typical congruency tasks designed to induce cognitive conflict in the laboratory. The Flanker task contains two congruent stimuli () and two incongruent stimuli ( >). If the target and the distracters do not match, the arrows on both sides (distracters) will hinder the response to the target.
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