Executive Control Influenced by the Time Course of Alerting Effect

Inattention has been shown to be the greatest factor in the cause of driving collision and the warning signal can abstract the drivers' attention to the driving performance so that to reduce the driving collision. Driving is a complex task that taps mechanisms of cognition and attention. The understanding of the mechanisms of cognition and attention is useful to the understanding of driving. As Posner et al proposed the attention function is carried out by three different attention networks: alerting, orienting and executive control. The question is that whether the arousal level can affect executive control. The answer to this question can explain the effect of warning in driving and be useful to the design of warning signal. In the present experiment we used a modified version of the attention network test (ANT) to assess the interaction of alerting and executive control. We found that, when the alerting function is highly activated, the executive control prevents the system from engaging in higher level processing to enhance the responses to the present stimulus. And their inhibitory relationship is affected by the alert-cue interval. This result suggests us that we should pay attention to the warning signal time in driving.