In the spatial Stroop task, the presence of response

conflict had less of an additional effect on the dominant task over and above the effect of interruptions. One possible reason for this divergence is that in order to avoid contingencies between the irrelevant and the relevant dimensions (e.g., Melara & Algom, 2003) locations and word stimuli were selected randomly, leading to an average conflict probability of p = .75. In situations with high probability of conflict, conflict effects are often reduced, possibly Selleck BMS754807 because of a general tightening of control ( Tzelgov et al., 1992). Another reason for a relatively small contribution of conflict trials to the cost asymmetry is that in this experiment, conflict effects were “diluted” across RTs and errors, whereas in the endogenous/exogenous task conflict effects affected RTs only. The error learn more effects we did observe in Experiment 5 were in the same direction as RT effects, albeit only approaching the statistical significance criterion. Our goal was to explore the conditions that make it difficult to select between competing control settings, specifically between endogenous and exogenously controlled

attention. On a theoretical level we started out by proposing two conditions that have to be met so that subjects experience substantial selection costs. First, LTM needs to contain memory traces from earlier selection instances with the competing task. Second, these memory traces produce interference only once working memory is forced from a maintenance to an updating state, such as through strong bottom-up interference (as in the endogenous task), task switches, or during

recovery from externally imposed interruptions (as in the exogenous task during post-interruption trials). From these assumptions we derived and empirically confirmed the prediction that the asymmetric selection costs (i.e., larger costs for dominant Adenosine than for non-dominant control settings) arise after any interruption of ongoing processing. This is in contrast to predictions from the currently dominant “carry-over” account of task switching (e.g., Gilbert & Shallice, 2002), which cannot explain a selection cost asymmetry that arises from mere interruptions. Rather, for this account the trial-to-trial clash between competing task or control settings is a necessary condition for the selection cost asymmetry to arise. Cost asymmetries in the absence of task switches between competing tasks have been reported occasionally in the past (Allport and Wylie, 2000 and Bryck and Mayr, 2008). The current results go significantly beyond the existing evidence and allow us to both strengthen and fill in important details about our rather broad starting propositions: First, the interruption-based cost asymmetry is fairly general. In particular, it occurs both in situations in which subjects need to select between competing attentional control settings (Exp. 1–4) and between competing stimulus–response mappings (Exp.