Understanding the meaning of an emergency exit sign is essential for escaping from a building during a disaster. According to International Organization for Standardization 7010:2011, there are leftward and rightward running-man exit signs indicating the location of an exit door. However, there is neither an application rule regarding which direction the sign should point nor a rule for where it should be attached in the horizontal dimension. We examined the effect of the heading direction of the running man and its horizontal locations on the selection of exit directions. A modified spatial Stroop task as an unforced-choice task was designed by combining the running man's heading direction and its horizontal location. The results showed both facilitation and inhibition effects, conflict adaptation, and post-error slowing reflecting top-down control. These findings suggest that the heading direction of the running-man exit sign includes evident directionality. This should be considered in designing and establishing standardized emergency exit signs.

The conflict adaptation (CA) effect refers to the reduction in the interference effect observed in conflict tasks that follow incongruent compared to congruent trials. It has been suggested that CA is caused by the exertion of flexible cognitive control, supported by many behavioral and neuroimaging studies; however, it remains unclear how conflict-related features of the preceding trial are conveyed to subsequent trials for following adaptation. This review aims to summarize evidence supporting the top-down modulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and passive short-term maintenance in the posterior brain areas as mechanisms underlying CA, respectively, and to suggest a new integrated view of CA, including active maintenance in working memory. We review empirical evidences suggesting that both dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and posterior brain regions play critical roles in CA, rather than either top-down modulation or passive maintenance alone. Although the active maintenance view of CA appears to explain many existing findings, empirical studies are required to directly test this view.

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