Figure 1

The Flanker Task. Participants were presented with a 13.5-sec fixation cross, which was followed by a 500 milliseconds pre-cue that informed participants that the critical stimulus will appear soon. Finally, an array of five arrows was on the screen. Participants responded to the orientation of the central arrow cue by pressing a button with their left hand if the central arrow cue pointed to the left and with their right hand if the central arrow cue pointed to the right. During one half of the trials, the flanking arrows faced in the same direction as the central arrow cue (i.e., congruent trials), and during the other half, they pointed in the opposite direction as the central arrow cue (i.e., incongruent trials). These stimuli remained on the screen for 2,000 milliseconds. Each participant underwent six successive five-minute blocks where they were presented with 17 trials that are first-order counterbalanced such that consistent and inconsistent trials followed each other equally [31]. This paradigm is sensitive to age-related decrements in attention control [48].