Figure 1.

Experimental task. In each trial, a visually presented cue word (“Look” or “Hear”) instructed participants to attend to and identify either the visual letter (“X” or “O”) or the auditory letter (“X” or “O”) of a possibly upcoming target–distracter letter pair. To modulate demands on cue-triggered processes that increase attention to relevant stimuli, we varied whether an irrelevant auditory word signaled the same task as the visual word (“Congruent Cue”) or a different task (“Incongruent Cue”). After a 1.875-s interval, an audiovisual target–distracter letter pair was presented. To modulate demands on target-triggered processes that detect response conflict, we varied whether the distracter letter was mapped to the same response as the target (“Congruent Target–Distracter Pair”) or to a different response (“Incongruent Target–Distracter Pair”). In cue-only trials (33%, not shown), the cue was not followed by a target–distracter letter pair.