Effects of Error and Response Conflict on Working Memory Maintenance and Retroactive Interference

Cognitive control mechanisms enable flexible behavior by triggering a cascade of attentional processes in response to events like performance errors or response conflict. While these events are known to impact ongoing cognition, their specific effects on the gating mechanisms of working memory (WM) to new, potentially interfering information, remain unclear. Across two experiments, we investigated the effects of errors and conflict on WM maintenance and WM retroactive interference (WMRI) using a combined task paradigm that integrated a face WM recognition paradigm with an arrow flanker task. In Experiment 1, we examined early post-response effects by presenting a distractor face stimulus immediately after flanker responses and found that error commission impaired correct WM recognition performance (WM maintenance) but did not increase WMRI. In contrast, response conflict (correct incongruent trials) significantly facilitated gating of the distractor into WM, resulting in increased WMRI without impairing recognition accuracy. Experiment 2 further investigated the time course of these conflict-related effects by presenting the distractor face at varying post-response intervals. Results revealed that conflict-induced WMRI was consistent across all intervals (0-750 ms), whereas maintenance impairment emerged only at longer intervals (> 540 ms). These findings suggest a multi-stage response to conflict: an initial transient attentional rebound that opens the gate to external information, followed by a later WM clearing process that degrades earlier WM representations.