Your conflict matters to me! Behavioral and neural manifestations of control adjustment after self-experienced and observed decision-conflict

In everyday life we tune our behavior to a rapidly changing environment as well as to the behavior of others. The behavioral and neural underpinnings of such adaptive mechanisms are the focus of the present study. In a social version of a prototypical interference task we investigated whether trial-...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jasper Winkel, Jasper G Wijnen, K. Richard Ridderinkhof, Iris I A Groen, Jan Derrfuss, Claudia Danielmeier, Birte U Forstmann
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2009-12-01
Series:Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Subjects:
N2
Online Access:http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/neuro.09.057.2009/full
Description
Summary:In everyday life we tune our behavior to a rapidly changing environment as well as to the behavior of others. The behavioral and neural underpinnings of such adaptive mechanisms are the focus of the present study. In a social version of a prototypical interference task we investigated whether trial-to-trial adjustments are comparable when experiencing conflicting action tendencies ourselves, or simulate such conflicts when observing another player performing the task. Using behavioral and neural measures by means of event-related brain potentials we showed that both own as well as observed conflict result in comparable trial-to-trial adjustments. These adjustments are found in the efficiency of behavioral adjustments, and in the amplitude of an event-related potential in the N2 time window. In sum, in both behavioral and neural terms, we adapt to conflicts happening to others just as if they happened to ourselves.
ISSN:1662-5161