Papers by Christian Frings
International Journal of Psychophysiology, 2010
In a typical flanker task, a to-be-selected central target is flanked by two to-be ignored, ident... more In a typical flanker task, a to-be-selected central target is flanked by two to-be ignored, identical distractors. The flanker negative priming (NP) effect denotes increased reaction time and error percent when the distractor of a first display serves as the target in the next. Most theories of NP are consistent with the idea that during processing of the first display, the identity of the distractors is inhibited. If the target of the subsequent display has the same identity, NP occurs because of persisting or retrieved inhibition. However, in the standard flanker task stimuli appear at the same screen locations for all trials, allowing for anticipatory spatial selection. No strong additional inhibition of stimulus identities may then be required. Therefore, besides the standard flanker task we employed a modified task in which the location of the stimulus triplet slightly differed across trials, thus disabling spatial pre-selection. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to identify brain correlates of NP in the two tasks. Behavioral NP was present in the modified task but absent in the standard task. An ERP correlate specific to NP in the modified task concerned larger amplitude of a left-posterior processing negativity. Results support the idea that stronger inhibition of distractor identities contributes to NP in the flanker task when spatial pre-selection is disabled.
Selective attention is a key mechanism to monitor conflict-related processing and behaviour, by a... more Selective attention is a key mechanism to monitor conflict-related processing and behaviour, by amplifying task-relevant processing and inhibiting task-irrelevant information. Conflict monitoring and resolution is typically associated with brain oscillatory power increase in the theta frequency range (3-8 Hz), as indexed by increased midfrontal theta power. We expand previous findings of theta power increase related to conflict processing and distractor inhibition by considering attentional target amplification to be represented in theta frequency as well. The present study (N = 41) examined EEG oscillatory activities associated with stimulus and response conflict in a lateralized flanker task. Depending on the perceptual (in)congruency and response (in)compatibility of distractor-target associations, resulting stimulus and response conflicts were examined in behavioural and electrophysiological data analyses. Both response and stimulus conflict emerged in RT analysis. Regarding EEG...
Cognition, 2019
License: Article 25fa pilot End User Agreement This publication is distributed under the terms of... more License: Article 25fa pilot End User Agreement This publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (Auteurswet) with explicit consent by the author. Dutch law entitles the maker of a short scientific work funded either wholly or partially by Dutch public funds to make that work publicly available for no consideration following a reasonable period of time after the work was first published, provided that clear reference is made to the source of the first publication of the work. This publication is distributed under The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) 'Article 25fa implementation' pilot project. In this pilot research outputs of researchers employed by Dutch Universities that comply with the legal requirements of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act are distributed online and free of cost or other barriers in institutional repositories. Research outputs are distributed six months after their first online publication in the original published version and with proper attribution to the source of the original publication. You are permitted to download and use the publication for personal purposes. All rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyrights owner(s) of this work. Any use of the publication other than authorised under this licence or copyright law is prohibited. If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons.
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 2010
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2015
Negative Priming (NP) is an influential paradigm in cognitive psychology that was originally deve... more Negative Priming (NP) is an influential paradigm in cognitive psychology that was originally developed to measure attentional selection. Yet, up to the mid-1990s, a large number of experimental reports questioned whether the NP effect is based on attentional inhibition and/or episodic retrieval processes. In this review, we summarize findings since the mid-1990s and discuss new and old theoretical approaches to Negative Priming. We conclude that more than one process contributes to NP and that future research should analyze the conditions under which a particular process contributes to NP. Moreover, we argue that the paradigmalthough it does not measure a single cognitive process aloneis still a useful tool for understanding selection in cognition. In fact, it might be a virtue of the paradigm that several cognitive processes work here together as selection in nonexperimental contexts is surely a multidimensional process. From this perspective, research on NP is relevant for all research fields analyzing selection. We therefore close our review by discussing the implications of the new evidence on NP for theories of selective attention.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2014
People can rapidly form arbitrary associations between stimuli and the responses they make in the... more People can rapidly form arbitrary associations between stimuli and the responses they make in the presence of those stimuli. Such stimulus-response (S-R) bindings, when retrieved, affect the way that people respond to the same, or related, stimuli. Only recently, however, has the flexibility and ubiquity of these S-R bindings been appreciated, particularly in the context of priming paradigms. This is important for the many cognitive theories that appeal to evidence from priming. It is also important for the control of action generally. An S-R binding is more than a gradually learned association between a specific stimulus and a specific response; instead, it captures the full, context-dependent behavioral potential of a stimulus.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2017
Involuntary retrieval of previous stimulus-response episodes is a centerpiece of many theories of... more Involuntary retrieval of previous stimulus-response episodes is a centerpiece of many theories of priming, episodic binding, and action control. Typically it is assumed that by repeating a stimulus from trial n-1 to trial n, involuntary retrieval is triggered in a nearly automatic fashion, facilitating (or interfering with) the to-be-executed action. Here we argue that changes in the offline context weaken the involuntary retrieval of previous episodes (the offline context is defined to be the information presented before or after the focal stimulus). In four conditions differing in cue modality and target modality, retrieval was diminished if participants changed the target selection criterion (as indicated by a cue presented before the selection took place) while they still performed the same task. Thus, solely through changes in the offline context (cue or selection criterion), involuntary retrieval can be weakened in an effective way.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2016
Short-term bindings between responses and events in the environment ensure efficient behavioral c... more Short-term bindings between responses and events in the environment ensure efficient behavioral control. This notion holds true for two particular types of binding: bindings between responses and response-irrelevant distractor stimuli that are present at the time of responding, and also for bindings between responses and the effects they cause. Although both types of binding have been extensively studied in the past, little is known about their interrelation. In three experiments, we analyzed both types of binding processes in a distractorresponse binding design and in a response-effect binding design, which yielded two central findings: (1) Distractorresponse binding and response-effect binding effects were observed not only in their native, but also in the corresponding Bnon-native^design, and (2) a manipulation of retrieval delay affected both types of bindings in a similar way. We suggest that a general and unselective mechanism is responsible for integrating own responses with a large variety of stimuli.
Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, Jan 26, 2015
Human action control is influenced by bindings between perceived stimuli and responses carried ou... more Human action control is influenced by bindings between perceived stimuli and responses carried out in their presence. Notably, responses given to a target stimulus can also be integrated with additional response-irrelevant distractor stimuli that accompany the target (distractor-response binding). Subsequently reencountering such a distractor then retrieves the associated response. Although a large body of evidence supports the existence of this effect, the specific structure of distractor-response bindings is still unclear. Here, we test the predictions derived from 2 possible assumptions about the structure of bindings between distractors and responses. According to a configural approach, the entire distractor object is integrated with a response, and only upon repetition of the entire distractor object the associated response would be retrieved. According to an elemental approach, one would predict integration of individual distractor features with the response and retrieval due ...
Memory & Cognition, 2011
Distractor inhibition and distractor-response binding were investigated in two experiments by ana... more Distractor inhibition and distractor-response binding were investigated in two experiments by analyzing distractor repetition benefits and their interaction with response repetition effects in a sequential-priming paradigm. Distractor repetition benefits were larger for distractors that were incompatible with the to-be-executed response (task-related distractors) than for distractors that were not assigned to a response (neutral distractors), indicating that the strength of distractor inhibition was a function of response interference for the distractors. In contrast, the distractor-response bindings were found to be of equal strength for both task-related and neutral distractors. Thus, differences in the strengths of distractor inhibition did not affect the integration of distractors with responses into event files. Instead, our results suggest that distractor-response binding and distractor inhibition are independent mechanisms that are recruited for the automatization of behavior and action control.
Experimental Brain Research, 2011
In selection tasks where target stimuli are accompanied by distractors, responses to target stimu... more In selection tasks where target stimuli are accompanied by distractors, responses to target stimuli, target stimuli and the distractor stimuli can be encoded together as one episode in memory. Subsequent repetition of any aspect of such an episode can lead to the retrieval of the whole episode including the response. Thus, repeating a distractor can retrieve responses given to previous targets; this mechanism was labeled distractor-response binding and has been evidenced in vision and audition. Yet, previous research suggests possibly different distractor processing in the tactile as compared to the visual modality. In the present study, we therefore used a selection task in which participants always responded to one tactile stimulus while ignoring another. Evidence for the integration of tactile distractors with target responses was found in response times and errors. Our results indicate that binding of responses to distractors is a cognitive process that is independent of the stimulus' modality.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2014
Response-irrelevant stimuli can be encoded with, and later on retrieve, a response given to a rel... more Response-irrelevant stimuli can be encoded with, and later on retrieve, a response given to a relevant stimulus, an effect that is called distractor-response binding. In three experiments using a prime-probe design, we investigated whether the allocation of attention modulates the processes contributing to distractor-response binding. Participants identified letters via keypresses while attending to one of two sets of simultaneously presented but response-irrelevant number stimuli. In different experiments, both spatial attention and feature-based attention were allocated to the responseirrelevant stimuli. The results showed that only attended response-irrelevant stimuli elicited effects of distractor-response binding. In particular, while the encoding of response-irrelevant stimuli and responses was not particularly affected by attention during prime processing, only attended response-irrelevant stimuli in the probe retrieved previous responses. Hence, we show that attention affects action regulation due to modulating the influence of stimulus-response binding on behavior.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2013
Distractor-based retrieval of event files was assessed with a sequential priming experiment using... more Distractor-based retrieval of event files was assessed with a sequential priming experiment using a four-choice identification task. Pictures or sounds of four different animals (frog, chicken, lamb, singing bird) had to be categorized by pressing one of four keys. On each trial, a target and a distractor stimulus were presented simultaneously in different modalities. The relevant modality switched randomly between trials. Distractor repetition effects were modulated by the response relation between the prime and probe: Repeating the prime distractor in the probe produced facilitation if the response repeated, but not if a different response had to be given in the prime and probe. Repeating the prime distractor in the probe led to an automatic retrieval of the prime response. Importantly, this distractor-based response retrieval effect also emerged for those sequences in which the modality of the repeated distractor was switched between the prime and probe. This cross-modal priming effect indicates that distractors were integrated into event files on a conceptual level and that response retrieval processes were mediated by conceptual codes of the distractor stimuli.
Experimental Psychology, 2018
. We tested the hypothesis that selective response preparation, based on reliable response cues, ... more . We tested the hypothesis that selective response preparation, based on reliable response cues, reduces response conflict in an Eriksen flanker task. Previous studies of this issue produced inconclusive results because presenting an always valid response cue before the stimulus display turns a choice-response task into a simple-response task, in which full processing of the actual stimulus display is no longer necessary. We conducted two experiments in which we matched stimulus processing in conditions without cues and with reliable cues as far as possible. In both experiments, we presented a nogo target stimulus in 25% of the trials. The different cueing conditions were presented in separate blocks in Experiment 1 but mixed within blocks in Experiment 2. The most important result was the reduction of response conflict as induced by incompatible flanker stimuli in both experiments with reliable response cues. This finding supports the notion of a negative preparation-interference relationship.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 2015
Numerous studies that have investigated visual selective attention have demonstrated that a salie... more Numerous studies that have investigated visual selective attention have demonstrated that a salient but taskirrelevant stimulus can involuntarily capture a participant's attention. Over the years, a lively debate has erupted concerning the impact of contingent top-down control settings on such stimulus-driven attentional capture. In the research reported here, we investigated whether top-down sets would also affect participants' performance in a multisensory task setting. A nonspatial compatibility task was used, in which the target and the distractor were always presented sequentially from the same spatial location. We manipulated targetdistractor similarity by varying the visual and tactile features of the stimuli. Participants always responded to the visual target features (color); the tactile features were incorporated into the participants' top-down set only when the experimental context allowed for the tactile feature to be used in order to discriminate the target from the distractor. Larger compatibility effects after bimodal distractors were observed only when the participants were searching for a bimodal target and when tactile information was useful. Taken together, these results provide the first demonstration of nonspatial contingent crossmodal capture.
Attention, perception & psychophysics, 2014
Negative priming (NP) refers to fact that people respond more slowly and make more errors when re... more Negative priming (NP) refers to fact that people respond more slowly and make more errors when responding to target stimuli that were previously ignored. This phenomenon has also been observed when participants respond to the location, and not only to the identity, of the stimulus. Intriguingly, while roughly the same pattern of results has been observed in the visual, auditory, and tactile modalities when it comes to identity-based NP, the same does not hold true for spatial NP: In particular, feature mismatch seems to be the sole cause of auditory spatial NP, whereas response inhibition would appear to be the sole cause of spatial NP in vision. We conducted a novel tactile variant of the spatial NP task. We investigated whether spatial NP in the tactile modality exists, and further, we investigated whether the pattern of spatial NP in the tactile modality compares with what has been documented previously in vision or audition. Tactile spatial NP was observed, and it was independen...
Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2008
The present study investigated the ability to inhibit the processing of an irrelevant visual obje... more The present study investigated the ability to inhibit the processing of an irrelevant visual object while processing a relevant one. Participants were presented with 2 overlapping shapes (e.g., circle and square) in different colors. The task was to name the color of the relevant object designated by shape. Congruent or incongruent color words appeared in the relevant object, in the irrelevant object, or in the background. Stroop effects indicated how strong the respective area of the display was processed. The results of 4 experiments showed that words in the relevant object produced larger Stroop effects than words in the background, indicating amplification of relevant objects. In addition, words in the irrelevant object consistently produced smaller Stroop effects than words in the background, indicating inhibition of irrelevant objects. Control experiments replicated these findings with brief display durations (250 ms) and ruled out perceptual factors as a possible explanation....
Attention, perception & psychophysics, 2014
The selective-attention model of Houghton and Tipper (1994) assumes top-down deactivation of (con... more The selective-attention model of Houghton and Tipper (1994) assumes top-down deactivation of (conflicting) distractor representations as a mechanism of visual attention. Deactivation should produce an inverted-U-shaped activation function for distractor representations. In a recent study, Frings, Wentura, and Wühr (2012) tested this prediction in a variant of the flanker task in which a cue sometimes required participants to respond to the distractors rather than to the target. When reaction times and error rates were plotted as a function of the target-cue stimulus onset asynchrony, a quadratic trend emerged, consistent with the notion of distractor deactivation. However, in the flanker task, an alternative explanation for the quadratic trend in terms of attentional zooming is possible. The present experiments tested the deactivation account against the attentional-zooming account with the Stroop and the Simon task, in which attentional zooming should have minimal effects on distra...
Visual Cognition, 2007
The present study investigates the effects of distractor repetitions between prime and probe disp... more The present study investigates the effects of distractor repetitions between prime and probe displays on behaviour in the negative-priming (NP) paradigm. Investigating this condition is theoretically significant because inhibition-based accounts and episodic retrieval accounts of NP on one side and the temporal-discrimination theory on the other side make opposite predictions with regard to the effects of distractor repetition. In particular,
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2009
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Papers by Christian Frings