Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Vicerrectoría de Investigación y Posgrado, Universidad Católica del Maule, Talca, Chile
Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Tristan Bekinschtein
Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, Cambridge, United Kingdom
Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Amsterdam Brain & Cognition, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Conflict detection in sensory input is central to adaptive human behavior. Perhaps unsurprisingly, past research has shown that conflict may even be detected in the absence of conflict awareness, suggesting that conflict detection is an automatic process that does not require attention. To test the possibility of conflict processing in the absence of attention, we manipulated task relevance and response overlap of potentially conflicting stimulus features across six behavioral tasks. Multivariate analyses on human electroencephalographic data revealed neural signatures of conflict only when at least one feature of a conflicting stimulus was attended, regardless of whether that feature was part of the conflict, or overlaps with the response. In contrast, neural signatures of basic sensory processes were present even when a stimulus was completely unattended. These data reveal an attentional bottleneck at the level of objects, suggesting that object-based attention is a prerequisite for cognitive control operations involved in conflict detection.
