Testing variation of attention capacities in a complex auto-adaptive system: a Stroop task simulation

The Stroop task is a test commonly used in psychology to study interferences that occur in control when two cognitive processes are in competition, and where a non-habitual response, needed to reach a defined goal, competes with the habitual response. Many computer simulations already exist for this task, mostly in neural networks. This article presents a new simulation approach, the first attempt to simulate the Stroop task using the properties of complexity and auto-adaptivity in a massive multi-agent system. Our approach allows us to simulate the time effects of cognitive impairment on the task, the adaptive cognitive behaviours involved, and is a first step for the simulation of cognitive disorders.