Abstract
The primary challenge for theories of cognitive control is to explain how the cognitive system reliably distinguishes relevant from irrelevant information. Such selection processes must be achieved through multiple stages ranging from the blocking of unnecessary sensory inputs to the suppression of inappropriate actions. An intriguing question, therefore, might be how different stages of selection processes interact with each other. Specifically, the current study asked if response inhibition shares common resources with perceptual selection. In each trial of two experiments, participants performed a go/no-go task and a visual search in a row. In Experiment 1, participants either pressed a button or withheld a response depending on a cue color. In a visual search task, they reported a direction of rotated T among Ls. Overall search RTs were slower after no-go responses than go responses. However, response inhibition did not affect search efficiency, which was indexed by the slope of a linear function relating RTs and search set size (no interaction between set size and response inhibition). Such absence of interaction might result from the lack of active inhibition; an automatic component of response inhibition associated with a no-go color cue might be dominant in our experiment (Verbruggen and Logan, 2008). To reduce the involvement of automatic response inhibition, Experiment 2 employed a category cue (indoor or outdoor scenes) for no-go and go responses. The automatic retrieval of response inhibition should be minimized because scenes were never repeated across trials. As results, search efficiency was significantly impaired after no-go responses. In Experiment 3, we extended our findings using a stop signal paradigm. Again, search efficiency was impaired after the stop responses compared to the go responses. The current findings indicate that active cancellation of planned action interferes with concurrent perceptual processes, suggesting that two processes might share cognitive resources.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018