AUTHOR=Winkel Jasper , Wijnen Jasper G., Ridderinkhof K. Richard , Groen Iris I., Derrfuss Jan , Danielmeier Claudia , Forstmann Birte U. TITLE=Your conflict matters to me! Behavioral and neural manifestations of control adjustment after self-experienced and observed decision-conflict JOURNAL=Frontiers in Human Neuroscience VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2009 YEAR=2009 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/neuro.09.057.2009 DOI=10.3389/neuro.09.057.2009 ISSN=1662-5161 ABSTRACT=

In everyday life we tune our behavior to a rapidly changing environment as well as to the behavior of others. The behavioral and neural underpinnings of such adaptive mechanisms are the focus of the present study. In a social version of a prototypical interference task we investigated whether trial-to-trial adjustments are comparable when experiencing conflicting action tendencies ourselves, or simulate such conflicts when observing another player performing the task. Using behavioral and neural measures by means of event-related brain potentials we showed that both own as well as observed conflict result in comparable trial-to-trial adjustments. These adjustments are found in the efficiency of behavioral adjustments, and in the amplitude of an event-related potential in the N2 time window. In sum, in both behavioral and neural terms, we adapt to conflicts happening to others just as if they happened to ourselves.