Another line of research in our lab focuses on how alerting cues influence attentional control and the processing of conflicting information. Providing participants with an alerting cue, which prepares them for an upcoming stimulus, has previously been shown to paradoxically increase the size of the congruency effect, suggesting less efficient control. This effect is observed in Flanker tasks but not in Stroop tasks, raising questions about the underlying mechanisms. In collaboration with colleagues at Bates College and Washington University in St. Louis, we have examined whether experimentally shifting the timing of distractor activation in Stroop produces an alerting-congruency interaction similar to Flanker. Findings indicate that when distractors in Stroop are previewed, the interaction emerges, consistent with earlier activation of the irrelevant dimension. Ongoing work explores how trial-to-trial dynamics and list-wide congruency proportions modulate the interaction, providing insight into how attentional control adapts over time and across contexts.