Abstract
Information conflict refers to a mismatch between strong competing cues for identifying or classifying an object. The response would be slower and less accurate in the incongruent condition (stimulus associated with different reactions) relative to congruent condition (stimuli associated with same reactions). The conflict effects were attribute to response competition activated by conflicting information. By using arrows and Arabic numbers as the stimuli to manipulate the perceptual similarity in two conflict tasks (flanker task and majority function task), the current study tested 1) whether the conflict effects stemmed from perceptual confusion among stimuli; 2) whether the impact of perceptual confusion on conflict effects was less pronounced in conflict task involving more cognitive control. The results showed that the conflict effects (difference between congruent and incongruent trials) were stronger in high perceptual similarity conditions (when stimuli were arrows) relative to low perceptual similarity conditions (when stimuli were numbers). Notably, the conflict effects were not observed in the flanker with low perceptual similarity conditions. However, the interaction between Task and Similarity was not significant. The findings suggested that perceptual confusion made a significant contribution to the conflict effect, while it may particularly interfere with the automatic processing of conflict information.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Data collection and preliminary analysis were sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#31671154).
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Wang, S., He, X., Lu, C. et al. Perceptual confusion makes a significant contribution to the conflict effect: Insight from the flanker task and the majority function task. Curr Psychol 43, 1011–1019 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04318-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04318-5