Differential interference of body- and non-body-related representational conflicts on error and performance monitoring in flanker tasks

The performance monitoring system handles representational conflicts with the goal of reducing errors. What remains unclear is whether and how the representational nature of a stimulus modulates conflict resolution. To deal with this issue, we performed five experiments to measure the degree of cognitive interference occurring in Flanker tasks and tested whether effects induced by body- and non-body-related stimuli may change as a function of task requirements and affect conflict processing. In Experiment1, conflicts elicited by hands/letters were used to activate typical competing responses. In Experiment2, stimuli were perceptually matched for low-level features (e.g., target/flanker contrast). In Experiment3, no-go trials were added to increase conflict load and reveal content-driven effects in inhibitory control. In Experiment 4, the onset of target/flanker competition was set at two different delays to investigate conflict persistence during target processing. Finally, in Experiment5, body- vs. non-body-related stimuli were combined to measure content-driven effects underlying conflict resolution. A multi-analysis approach to data was employed, combining linear and Bayesian drift-diffusion models. Results show that body-related representations reduced cognitive interference, a robust effect that was observed across all experiments. These findings suggest that representations related to the body selectively engage the performance monitoring system during conflict processing.