Stages of information processing run in parallel
This study shows that if you give someone auditory instructions to use their mouse to click on a “candle”, and there are two pictures on a computer screen, candle and candy, then the subject’s mouse pointer describes a smooth, curved trajectory with the curvature indicating competition between the two choices. This argues that competition and parallelism go all the way through the cognitive system; as opposed to a model in which there are discrete stages of processing, in which the conflict would be resolved at an earlier stage of processing without impacting the mouse trajectory.
An author argues that this support continuous, dynamical systems models.
Michael J. Spivey, Marc Grosjean, and Günther Knoblich. Continuous attraction toward phonological competitors.. PNAS published June 28, 2005, 10.1073/pnas.0503903102