B.2.7.3.2. Non-inhibitory models of resistance to interference

Non-inhibitory accounts of resistance to interference were also proposed by some authors in framework related to the biased-competition (Desimone & Duncan, 1995; Duncan et al., 1997; Duncan, 2006). These accounts could be linked to the controversies surrounding the notion of cognitive inhibition (e.g. Aron, 2007; MacLeod et al., 2003). A recent study by Hampshire and colleagues (2010) also cast some doubt on this notion. They showed that the rIFG, usually thought to underlie inhibition, might actually rather be involved in the detection of cues relevant for the task. They claimed that this structure plays a general role in executive functions. They proposed that "the contribution of the rIFG to inhibitory control can be considered akin [...to] the effortful maintenance and execution of a planned behaviour" (p. 1318). Consistently, Woolgar, Thompson, & Duncan (in press) showed that this region, bilaterally, was involved in coding stimulus-response mapping rules. Several phenomena usually attributed to inhibition could be accounted for by referring to the notion of biased competition (e.g. Cohen & Servan-Schreiber, 1992; Kimberg & Farah, 1993; 2000; Miller & Cohen, 2001). Several non-inhibitory models have emerged in the eye movement domain. For instance, Reuter and Kathmann (2004), along with others with related viewpoints (e.g. Nieuwenhuis, Broerse, Nielen, & de Jong, 2004, Barton, Panditta, Thakkar, Goff, & Manoach, 2008) proposed to account for antisaccade performance and its impairments in terms of biased competition. Their proposal was based on two major assumptions: a competitive account of executive functions (Duncan et al., 1996), which could be linked to the later propositions of Sala and Courtney (2007; Courtney et al., 2007; see introduction), and a competitive account of inhibition-like phenomena (Kimberg & Farah, 1993; 2000; Miller & Cohen, 2001; see also Munoz & Istvan, 1998, for a more neurophysiological perspective). This account of resistance to interference will be quickly outlined, before arguing that it could easily apply to the attentional domain.