After experiencing distraction or temptation, people tend to be better able to cope with future conflict. In cognitive psychology, this is often shown by using sequential conflict tasks, such as... Show moreAfter experiencing distraction or temptation, people tend to be better able to cope with future conflict. In cognitive psychology, this is often shown by using sequential conflict tasks, such as the Stroop task, in which people are required to name the colour of the ink of a word, and ignore the word itself. After presentation of the word “red” in a green colour, for example, people show a smaller conflict effect if later shown the word “green” in a red colour. According to established theory, this is related to the working of executive control: initial conflict triggers increased attention (towards the colour instead of the word) or inhibition (of the word), thus making it easier to cope with repeated conflict. In this dissertation, I argue for a revision of this prominent theory towards a more memory based explanation of executive control. Instead of initial conflict working forward in time to affect the later task, the behavioural and psychophysiological experiments reported here show that the previous task is remembered due to the similarity with the current task, triggering similar modes of behaviour. Show less
