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Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Measurement of Neurophysiological Signals of Ignoring and Attending Processes in Attention Control
Published on: July 5, 2015
Alertness and cognitive control: Is there a spatial attention constraint?
1Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN, 47907, USA. dws@purdue.edu.
Abstract:
Congruency effects in arrow flanker tasks are often larger when subjects are more alert, suggesting an unusual connection between alertness and cognitive control. Theoretical accounts of the alerting-congruency interaction differ with respect to whether and how spatial attention is involved. In the present study, the author conducted eight experiments to determine whether there is a spatial attention constraint linking alertness to cognitive control. Alertness was manipulated in color-word Stroop tasks involving stimuli that were spatially integrated (Experiments 1-3) or separated (Experiments 4 and 5), as well as in Stroop-like tasks involving spatially separated stimuli for which the irrelevant stimulus features were spatial words (Experiments 6 and 7) or arrows (Experiment 8). All experiments yielded effects of alerting and congruency, but none produced the alerting-congruency interaction typically found with arrow flanker tasks. The results suggest that there is a spatial attention constraint on the relationship between alertness and cognitive control, part of which might involve having a task goal associated with spatial information processing.
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