Sequential Congruency Effects of Reverse Stroop Interference On Event-Related Potential Components For Go- and Nogo-Stimuli
Abstract Sequential congruency effects are observed in interference tasks, in which RTs are shorter for congruent stimuli preceded by congruent (cC) than incongruent stimuli (iC), and RTs are longer for incongruent stimuli preceded by congruent (cI) than incongruent stimuli (iI). These effects are interpreted as resulting from incongruent stimuli triggering attentional control in the next trial, which reduces cognitive control. The aim of this study was to examine sequential congruency effects on ERP components for Go- and Nogo-stimuli using the hybrid reverse Stroop Go/Nogo task. Results indicated that the Nogo-N1 was reduced by trials preceded by incongruent stimuli compared to congruent ones, suggesting that color processing was inhibited by attentional control. However, there was no reduction in the Go-N1. Moreover, the Nogo-N2 amplitudes were larger for cI than iI and iC than cC. On the other hand, the Go-N2 was not modulated by sequential modulation effects, which was lower for incongruent stimuli than congruent stimuli. These results indicate that the Nogo-N2 is involved in cognitive control, whereas the Go-N2 is associated with selection processing. Therefore, it was suggested that response inhibition task demands are necessary for modulating the ERP components by sequential congruency effects.