注意引导绑定:冲突适应研究整合的路径

The binding guided by attention:Toward an integrated approach on the investigations of conflict adaptation

冲突适应反映了基于目标导向行为的适应性认知控制,对个体适应环境具有重要意义.研究者主要从注意调节与记忆学习两个视角来解释冲突适应.前者强调注意资源调整在冲突适应中的作用,认为注意资源在目标刺激和干扰刺激间的分配(干扰刺激相比于目标刺激得到更少的注意资源)导致冲突适应;后者则强调记忆学习导致冲突适应的实现,即刺激与反应之间的绑定与解绑触发冲突适应.然而,由于研究侧重点不同,前人主要对两种视角分别进行探讨,不利于考察和理解冲突适应的全貌.因此,本文将基于偏向竞争模型和平行分布加工模型整合上述两种视角,并提出冲突适应的适切路径——注意引导的绑定学习假设.具体来说,冲突适应既需要通过任务目标要求来引导注意资源的分配,又需要通过绑定学习来增强“刺激-反应”的记忆表征,最终促进个体冲突适应行为的实现.注意引导的绑定学习假设为深入理解冲突适应的内在机制提供了整合的参考框架,并且为改善个体的冲突适应能力提供了可探寻的新方向.

In the everyday life,internal goals guide us to focus on task-relevant information but inhibit task-irrelevant information that however could not be completely filtered out.Here,cognitive control is required to drive the attention in accordance with internal goals.As an important phenomenon in the field of cognitive control,conflict adaptation refers to the adaptability of cognitive control in goal-guided behaviors,which is of great significance for individuals to adapt to ever-changing environments.In the lab,conflict adaptation is indexed by a reduced conflict after conflict trials(i.e.,Trial n–1 is incongruent stimulus)compared with after non-conflict trials(i.e.,Trial n–1 is congruent stimulus).In order to explain this important effect,researchers have proposed a number of accounts,which could be classified into two kinds of perspectives:Attention-based control accounts and memory-based learning accounts.The former includes the well-known conflict monitoring theory,the activation-suppression theory,the negative affective theory,and the expectancy theory.Whereas,the feature-integration theory,the contingency learning hypothesis,and the temporal learning hypothesis belong to the latter.In short,the control accounts emphasize that attentional resources adjustment leads to conflict adaptation through allocating more resources to the target dimension while allocating fewer resources to the distractor dimension.On the other hand,the learning accounts propose that the binding and unbinding of memories between stimulus and responses result in conflict adaptation.Due to their different research focuses,however,the previous studies have discussed the two accounts separately,which is not conducive to the investigation and understanding of the full profiles of conflict adaptation.From our perspective,conflict adaptation in essence is a goal-directed adjustment process.Meanwhile,it is also a phenomenon of learning.Accordingly,in the present comprehensive review,we proposed a hypothesis of the binding guided by attention,which combines the control accounts and the learning accounts.Specifically,conflict adaptation does not only need to guide the allocation of attention resources through task demand,but also needs to enhance the memory representation of“stimulusresponse”mapping through binding learning.The integration of the two processes should ultimately promote the occurrence of conflict adaptation.In fact,our hypothesis explains conflict adaptation by combining the Biased Competition model with the Parallel Distributed Processing model.Firstly,the Biased Competition model posits that top-down selective attention enhances neuronal activities that respond to target features and inhibits response-selective neuronal activities of distractor features.Thus,the competition between neurons is biased towards target characteristics.Secondly,the Parallel Distributed Processing model postulates that different stimulus dimensions(e.g.,colors and spatial locations)are processed in parallel in different channels that however can activate the same response system,and selective attention can change the processing priority of different stimulus dimensions.To conclude,by integrating the control accounts and the learning accounts,the current hypothesis provides a comprehensive and interpretable mechanism to address conflict adaptation.To be more specific,this hypothesis proposes that conflict adaptation is ultimately generated through binding learning(i.e.,the Hebbian learning)with the Parallel Distributed Processing model as the underlying mechanism.More importantly,the binding learning must be guided by the top-down attention-based control mechanism,which is achieved through the Biased Competition model.In summary,the attention-guided binding learning hypothesis provides an integrated reference frame for an in-depth understanding of the internal mechanism of conflict adaptation.