Suarez , I. C. , Burle, B. , Vidal, F. & Casini, L.
Laboratoire de Neurobiologie de la Cognition,Universite de Provence,Marseille
This study was aimed at investigating whether inhibition of inappropriate response elicited by irrelevant information needs attention to be implemented. A conflict task, the Simon reaction time (RT) task, was performed either as a single task or concurrently to a secondary task (dual-task condition, DT). In Simon RT task, it is classically observed that RTs are shorter for congruent stimulus-response associations than for incongruent stimulus-response associations. Nowadays, one admits that in the incongruent stimulus-response association, the non-required response automatically activated must be inhibited and the attention refocus on the relevant response to be implemented. Interestingly, the efficiency of selective response suppression can be evaluated through the analysis of RT distribution. In Experiment 1, the secondary task was a temporal task known to be very attention demanding. RT distribution analysis revealed that the DT did not alter the inhibition process. In Experiment 2, the secondary task was a visual tracking task involving more motor control. Results showed that the DT impaired the efficiency of inhibition, suggesting that the inhibitory processes do require attentional resources but drawn from motor resources rather than perceptual ones.