Irrelevant information processing: inquiry into the validity of a neural-based model
This dissertation contributed to the field of irrelevant information processing as a subfield of cognitive psychology. More specifically, the scope of this dissertation was to investigate how relevant information processing affects the quality of irrelevant information processing. To be able to account for the results obtained in the initial part of the thesis, we introduced the hypothesis that the translation from stimulus to response is not only influenced by the similarity of the mental codes associated with relevant and irrelevant information and responses (e.g. the dimensional overlap model; Kornblum et al., 1990), but also by the similarity of the neural regions that are involved in processing of the stimuli and responses. This similarity at the neural level was named “neural overlap” (in analogy of dimensional overlap), and was defined as the cortical and functional proximity of the processing regions of relevant and irrelevant information. In a subsequent part of the thesis, attempts were made to scrutinize the generality of the neural overlap hypothesis in a series of studies. Together, the ambiguous data gathered by these experiments question the feasibility of the neural overlap hypothesis.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations