How flexible is cognitive control? (Mouse) tracking conflict adaptation across context similarities

Bibliographic Data

ID21533093
AuthorsHera Potamianou (0000-0002-8232-1582, University of Tübingen, corresponding author), Donna Bryce (0000-0001-8311-4457, University of Augsburg)
Year2024
Volume88
Issue2
Pages562-579
Publication date2024-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychological Research (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0340-0727 • E-ISSN: 1430-2772
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s00426-023-01874-0
PMID37770556
OpenAlexW4387129301
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited52

Exerting cognitive control to remain on-task and reach our goals is a crucial skill, as is the ability to flexibly adapt our responding in rapidly changing environments. The dynamics of cognitive control are typically studied by examining how participants process stimuli that contain competing relevant and irrelevant information in so-called conflict tasks. Adjustments in performance following the experience of conflict, also termed conflict adaptation, suggests a certain degree of flexibility in the deployment of cognitive control. The present study investigated to what extent conflict adaptation effects transfer across trials of the same and different tasks in three online mouse-tracking experiments. Adaptations of the Simon and Stroop tasks were combined to create different levels of context similarity between the paired tasks. Based on a previous review (Braem et al., Frontiers in Psychology 5:1–13, 2014), across-task conflict adaptation was expected only in the most and least similar contexts. In contrast to our hypothesis, conflict adaptation effects were observed in at least one measure in all three experiments. To our surprise, task order also seemed to impact the size of across-task conflict adaptation effects. The heterogeneity in the current results highlight the importance of using sensitive measurement tools to evaluate conflict adaptation and suggest that the occurrence of across-task conflict adaptation may be conditional on more than just shared relevant and irrelevant dimensions

Cognition · Cognitive flexibility · Cognitive psychology · Stroop effect · Surprise · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology · Artificial Intelligence

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