Attention and working memory (WM) have classically been considered as two separate cognitive functions, but more recent theories have conceptualized them as operating on shared representations and being distinguished primarily by whether attention is directed internally (WM) or externally (attention, traditionally defined). Supporting this idea, a recent behavioral study documented a “WM Stroop effect,” showing that maintaining a color word in WM impacts perceptual color-naming performance to the same degree as presenting the color word externally in the classic Stroop task. Here, we employed ERPs to examine the neural processes underlying this WM Stroop task compared to those in the classic Stroop and in a WM-control task. Based on the assumption that holding a color word in WM would (pre-)activate the same color representation as by externally presenting that color word, we hypothesized that the neural cascade of conflict–control processes would occur more rapidly in the WM Stroop than in the classic Stroop task. Our behavioral results replicated equivalent interference behavioral effects for the WM and classic Stroop tasks. Importantly, however, the ERP signatures of conflict detection and resolution displayed substantially shorter latencies in the WM Stroop task. Moreover, delay-period conflict in the WM Stroop task, but not in the WM control task, impacted the ERP and performance measures for the WM probe stimuli. Together, these findings provide new insights into how the brain processes conflict between internal representations and external stimuli, and they support the view of shared representations between internally held WM content and attentional processing of external stimuli.

注意和工作记忆 (WM) 在经典上被认为是两个独立的认知功能，但最近的理论将它们概念化为对共享表征进行操作，并主要通过注意力是指向内部 (WM) 还是指向外部 (注意力，传统定义) 来区分. 支持这一想法，最近的一项行为研究记录了“WM Stroop 效应”，表明在 WM 中保留颜色词对感知颜色命名性能的影响程度与在经典 Stroop 任务中外部呈现颜色词的程度相同。在这里，我们使用 ERP 来检查与经典 Stroop 和 WM 控制任务中的神经过程相比，此 WM Stroop 任务背后的神经过程。基于在 WM 中持有一个颜色词会（预）激活与通过外部呈现该颜色词相同的颜色表示的假设，我们假设在 WM Stroop 中，冲突控制过程的神经级联会比在经典的 Stroop 任务。我们的行为结果复制了 WM 和经典 Stroop 任务的等效干扰行为效果。然而，重要的是，冲突检测和解决的 ERP 签名在 WM Stroop 任务中显示出明显更短的延迟。此外，WM Stroop 任务中的延迟期冲突，而不是 WM 控制任务，影响了 WM 探针刺激的 ERP 和性能测量。总之，这些发现为大脑如何处理内部表征和外部刺激之间的冲突提供了新的见解，