Context-Specific Conflict Adaptation and Consciousness: Specifying Central Mechanisms and Boundary Conditions

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The relation of cognitive control processes and awareness was intensely debated in the last few years. While classic theories of control assume a close link between cognitive control and awareness, recent findings suggest that certain control processes, like the inhibition of responses, or the activation of task sets, can be triggered unconsciously. However, hitherto findings regarding conflict adaptation, which is a central cognitive control process, and its relation with awareness are relatively inconsistent. Reuss, Desender, Kiesel, and Kunde (2014) found that, under particular circumstances, an adaptation to quickly changing contexts that are associated with certain conflict frequencies is possible when neither the context nor the conflict information is represented consciously. The goal of this project is to investigate the underlying mechanisms of context-specific conflict adaptation, to examine the limits and boundary conditions of context-specific adaptation, and especially to specify the role of conscious stimulus representations in different aspects of contextual adaptation. I will investigate which characteristics of the conflict and of the context are crucial for (unconscious) context-specific adaptation, which mechanisms the adaptation process is based on, and which role subjective feeling of conflict plays for the contextual modulation. In this project, manipulating awareness allows, on the one hand, investigating the limits and possibilities of unconscious processing with respect to cognitive control processes. On the other hand, manipulating awareness also helps defining the underlying mechanisms, preconditions, and characteristics of context-specific conflict adaptation. The results of this project will therefore extend our understanding of when and how awareness is necessary to initiate particular cognitive processes, and specify how context-specific conflict adaption functions.