The flankers task and response competition: A useful tool for investigating a variety of cognitive problems

Abstract Research has shown that the reaction-time interference produced by the flankers task arises, at least in large part, from the incipient activation of competing responses. The response competition paradigm has made valuable contributions to evaluating continuous flow versus discrete stage models of information processing as well as understanding cortical evoked potentials. The paradigm has been used to map the visual attentional field as a function of task demands and has also been found useful in the study of memory. It offers promise in studies of cognitive categorization and has provided insights into the “fast same effect” on same-different judgements on comparison tasks. It is currently being applied to the study of disjunctive comparisons.