Citation

Dudschig C, Jentzsch I. Psychophysiology 2008; 45(5): 751-758.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Society for Psychophysiological Research, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00686.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In serial reaction time (RT) tasks, performance is strongly influenced by previous events. RT in Trial N is much slower after response changes than response repetitions from Trial N−2 to Trial N−1 when response–stimulus interval is short (I. Jentzsch & H. Leuthold, 2005). The aim of the present study was to investigate the mechanisms leading to this slowing by contrasting the idea of a hard bottleneck, postponing all subsequent processing, with a selective prolonging of postperceptual stages. We analyzed the lateralized readiness potential (LRP) and peak latencies of P1, N1, and P300 components in a choice RT task mapping four stimuli to two responses. Alternation‐based interference affected the S‐LRP interval but neither the LRP‐R interval nor the latency of P1, N1, and P300. These findings suggest that, whereas alternation‐based conflict originates at response‐related stages, postconflict slowing selectively affects central, premotoric processing.