A model-based approach to disentangling facilitation and interference effects in conflict tasks

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Conflict tasks are dominant in cognitive psychology, demonstrating the conflict effect where incompatible trials yield slower, less accurate responses than compatible trials.
• The conflict effect comprises facilitation (benefit from consistent information) and interference (impairment from conflicting information).
• Previous methods using neutral trials rely on Donder's subtractive method, which has unverifiable assumptions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a novel model-based approach for disentangling facilitation and interference effects in conflict tasks.
• To extend the diffusion model for conflict tasks (DMC) framework to account for differential automatic activation in compatible and incompatible trials.
• To apply this new approach to existing flanker and Simon task data to investigate the asymmetry of facilitation and interference.

Main Methods:

• Developed a model-based approach extending the diffusion model for conflict tasks (DMC).
• The extended DMC allows for varying levels of automatic activation in compatible and incompatible trials.
• Validated the model's measurement properties through comprehensive parameter recovery assessments.

Main Results:

• Applied the model to nine datasets from flanker and Simon tasks.
• Findings indicate asymmetric facilitation and interference effects.
• Interference effects were consistently present, while facilitation effects were minimal or absent across participants and studies.

Conclusions:

• The novel model-based approach provides a robust method for disentangling facilitation and interference effects.
• Results suggest interference is a more prevalent component of the conflict effect than facilitation.
• This approach allows for comparison between experimental (neutral trials) and model-based analyses of conflict processing.