The capacity to control emotion is important for human adaptation. Questions about the neural bases of emotion regulation have recently taken on new importance, as functional imaging studies in humans have permitted direct investigation of control strategies that draw upon higher cognitive processes difficult to study in nonhumans. Such studies have examined (1) controlling attention to, and (2) cognitively changing the meaning of, emotionally evocative stimuli. These two forms of emotion regulation depend upon interactions between prefrontal and (...) cingulate control systems and cortical and subcortical emotion-generative systems. Taken together, the results suggest a functional architecture for the cognitive control of emotion that dovetails with findings from other human and nonhuman research on emotion. (shrink)

BackgroundThis study explored the proportion of variance in depressive symptoms explained by processes targeted by BA (activation, behavioral avoidance, anticipatory pleasure, and brooding), and processes targeted by cognitive control training (cognitive control, attentional biases, and brooding).MethodsFive hundred and twenty adults were recruited. They completed a spatial cueing task as a measure of attentional biases and a cognitive task as a measure of cognitive control and completed self-report measures of activation, behavioral avoidance, anticipatory pleasure, (...) brooding, and depressive symptoms. With path analysis models, we explored the relationships between these predictors and depressive symptoms.ResultsBA processes were significant predictors of depressive symptoms, and activation partially predicted anticipatory pleasure, which in turn predicted depressive symptoms. However, cognitive control and attentional biases predicted neither brooding nor depressive symptoms. A comprehensive model including all processes fit the data but did not explain more of the variance in brooding or depressive symptoms than a model including only BA processes.LimitationsThe spatial cueing task was associated with low reliability and the use of a non-clinical sample limited the generalizability of the conclusions.ConclusionActivation, behavioral avoidance, brooding, and anticipatory pleasure are relevant processes to target in order to reduce depressive symptoms, while cognitive control and attentional biases are not. (shrink)

Cognitive control of physical activity and sedentary behavior is receiving increased attention in the neuroscientific and behavioral medicine literature as a means of better understanding and improving the self-regulation of physical activity. Enhancing individuals’ cognitive control capacities may provide a resilient means to increase physical activity and reduce sedentary behavior. First, this paper reviews emerging evidence of the antecedence of cognitive control abilities in successful self-regulation of physical activity, and in precipitating self-regulation failure that (...) predisposes to sedentary behavior. We then highlight the brain networks that may underpin the cognitive control and self-regulation of physical activity, including the default mode network, prefrontal cortical networks and brain regions and pathways associated with reward. We then discuss research on cognitive training interventions that document improved cognitive control and that suggest promise of influencing physical activity regulation. Key cognitive training components likely to be the most effective at improving self-regulation are also highlighted. The review concludes with suggestions for future research. (shrink)

In recent years bilingualism has been linked to both advantages in executive control and positive impacts on aging. Such positive cognitive effects of bilingualism have been attributed to the increased need for language control during bilingual processing and increased cognitive reserve, respectively. However, a mechanistic explanation of how bilingual experience contributes to cognitive reserve is still lacking. The current paper proposes a new focus on bilingual memory as an avenue to explore the relationship between executive (...) control and cognitive reserve. We argue that this focus will enhance our understanding of the functional and structural neural mechanisms underlying bilingualism-induced cognitive effects. With this perspective we discuss and integrate recent cognitive and neuroimaging work on bilingual advantage, and suggest an account that links cognitive control, cognitive reserve, and brain reserve in bilingual aging and memory. (shrink)

We investigated the association between cognitive control and individual differences in cortisol response to stress in participants with generalised anxiety disorder and in never-disordered c...

Heterogeneity within MDD has hampered identification of biological markers (e.g., intermediate phenotypes, IPs) that might increase risk for the disorder or reflect closer links to the genes underlying the disease process. The newer characterizations of dimensions of MDD within Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) domains may align well with the goal of defining IPs. We compare a sample of 25 individuals with MDD compared to 29 age and education matched controls in multimodal assessment. The multimodal RDoC assessment included the primary IP (...) biomarker, positron emission tomography (PET) with a selective radiotracer for 5-HT1A ([11C]WAY-100635), as well as event-related functional MRI with a Go/No-go task targeting the Cognitive Control network, neuropsychological assessment of affective perception, negative memory bias and Cognitive Control domains. There was also an exploratory genetic analysis with the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and monamine oxidase A (MAO-A) genes. In regression analyses, lower 5-HT1A binding potential (BP) in the MDD group was related to diminished engagement of the Cognitive Control network, slowed resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli, one element of Cognitive Control. In contrast, higher/normative levels of 5-HT1A BP in MDD (only) was related to a substantial memory bias toward negative information, but intact resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli and greater engagement of Cognitive Control circuitry. The serotonin transporter risk allele was associated with lower 1a BP and the corresponding imaging and cognitive IPs in MDD. Lowered 5HT 1a BP was present in half of the MDD group relative to the control group. Lowered 5HT 1a BP may represent a subtype including decreased engagement of Cognitive Control network and impaired resolution of interfering cognitive stimuli. Future investigations might link lowered 1a BP to neurobiological pathways and markers, as well as probing subtype-specific treatment targets. (shrink)

There is a need to understand more of the risk factors involved in the process from suicide ideation to suicide attempt. Cognitive control processes may be important factors in assessing vulnerability to suicide. A version of the Stroop procedure, Delis–Kaplan Executive Function System Color–Word Interference Test and Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function were used in this study to test attention control and cognitive shift, as well as to assess everyday executive function of 98 acute suicidal (...) psychiatric patients. The Columbia Suicide History Form was used to identify a group of suicide ideators and suicide attempters. Results showed that suicide attempters scored lower on attention control than suicide ideators who had no history of attempted suicide. The self-report in the BRIEF-A inventory did not reflect any cognitive differences between suicide ideators and suicide attempters. A logistic regression analysis showed that a poorer attention control score was associated with the suicide attempt group, whereas a poorer cognitive shift score was associated with the suicide ideation group. The results found in this study suggest that suicide attempters may struggle with control of attention or inhibiting competing responses but not with cognitive flexibility. (shrink)

Cognitive control is easy to identify in its effects, but difficult to grasp conceptually. This creates somewhat of a puzzle: Is cognitive control a bona fide process or an epiphenomenon that merely exists in the mind of the observer? The topiCS special edition on cognitive control presents a broad set of perspectives on this issue and helps to clarify central conceptual and empirical challenges confronting the field. Our commentary provides a summary of and critical (...) response to each of the papers. (shrink)

Affective variables have been shown to impact working memory and cognitive control. Theoretical arguments suggest that the functional impact of emotion on cognition might be mediated through shifting action dispositions related to changes in motivational orientation. The current study examined the effects of positive and negative affect on performance via direct manipulation of motivational state in tasks with high demands on cognitive control. Experiment 1 examined the effects of monetary reward on task-switching performance, while Experiment 2 (...) examined the effects of both rewards and punishments on working memory, using primary (liquid) reinforcers. In both experiments, dissociable trial-by-trial and contextual (block-related) enhancements of cognitive control during task performance were observed in relationship to motivational incentive value. Performance enhancements were equivalent in the reward and punishment conditions, but were differentially impacted by individual difference measures of trait reward and punishment sensitivity. Together, the results suggest both common and specific mechanisms by which approach and avoidance motivational states influence cognitive control, via activation of reward and punishment processing systems. (shrink)

Cognitive control refers to the regulation of mental activity to support flexible cognition across different domains. Cragg and Nation (2010) propose that the development of cognitive control in children parallels the development of language abilities, particularly inner speech. We suggest that children’s late development of cognitive control also mirrors their limited ability to revise misinterpretations of sentence meaning. Moreover, we argue that for certain tasks, a tradeoff between bottom-up (data-driven) and top-down (rule-based) thinking may (...) actually benefit performance in both children and adults. Specifically, we propose that a lack of cognitive control may promote important aspects of cognitive development, like language acquisition and creativity. (shrink)

In this commentary, I will argue that the componential and emergent views of cognitive control as defined by Cooper (2010) do not necessarily oppose each other, and I will try to make a case for their interdependence. First, I will use the construct of cognitive inhibition—one of the main componential control functions mentioned in the target articles—to illustrate my line of reasoning. Then, I will comment on how some of the target articles, each from a different (...) perspective, bring arguments in favor of this integrative view. (shrink)

The cost of incongruent stimuli is reduced when conflict is expected. This series of experiments tested whether this improved performance is due to repetition priming or to enhanced cognitive control. Using a paradigm in which Word and Number Stroop alternated every trial, Experiment 1 assessed dynamic trial-to-trial changes. Incongruent trials led to task-specific reduction of conflict (trial n ϩ 2) without cross-task modulation (trial n ϩ 1), but this was fully explained by repetition priming. In contrast, an increased (...) ratio of incongruent words did lead to sustained task-specific enhancement, above and beyond.. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBesides physiological, behavioural, and affective effects, romantic love also has cognitive effects. In this study, we tested whether individual differences in infatuation and/or attachment level predict impaired interference control even in the absence of a love booster procedure, and whether individual differences in attachment level predict reduced adaptive cognitive control as measured by conflict adaptation and post-error slowing. Eighty-three young adults who had recently fallen in love completed a Stroop-like task, which yielded reliable indices of interference (...) control and adaptive cognitive control. We did not observe the predicted negative association between infatuation or attachment level and interference control. It might be that reduced interference control with love only happens when people are actively thinking about their beloved. In addition, we observed only weak evidence for the prediction t... (shrink)

The past 25 years have witnessed an increasing awareness of the importance of cognitive control in the regulation of complex behavior. It now sits alongside attention, memory, language, and thinking as a distinct domain within cognitive psychology. At the same time it permeates each of these sibling domains. This introduction reviews recent work on cognitive control in an attempt to provide a context for the fundamental question addressed within this topic: Is cognitive control (...) to be understood as resulting from the interaction of multiple distinct control processes, or are the phenomena of cognitive control emergent? (shrink)

Cognitive control constrains retrieval processing and so restricts what comes to mind as input to the attribution system. We review evidence that older adults, patients with Alzheimer's disease, and people with traumatic brain injury exert less cognitive control during retrieval, and so are susceptible to memory misattributions in the form of dramatic levels of false remembering.

Cognitive control has long been one of the most active areas of computational modeling work in cognitive science. The focus on computational models as a medium for specifying and developing theory predates the PDP books, and cognitive control was not one of the areas on which they focused. However, the framework they provided has injected work on cognitive control with new energy and new ideas. On the occasion of the books' anniversary, we review (...) computational modeling in the study of cognitive control, with a focus on the influence that the PDP approach has brought to bear in this area. Rather than providing a comprehensive review, we offer a framework for thinking about past and future modeling efforts in this domain. We define control in terms of the optimal parameterization of task processing. From this vantage point, the development of control systems in the brain can be seen as responding to the structure of naturalistic tasks, through the filter of the brain systems with which control directly interfaces. This perspective lays open a set of fascinating but difficult research questions, which together define an important frontier for future computational research. (shrink)

Emotional information captures attention due to privileged processing. Consequently, performance in cognitive tasks declines. Therefore, shielding current goals fro...

Past research shows that the bilingual experience may enhance cognitive executive function. In this experiment, we evaluated cognitive control in bilinguals relative to monolinguals by using a dimensional overlap model to predict performance in a task composed of Stroop and Simon stimuli. A group of 24 Spanish monolinguals and 24 bilinguals with differing first languages and all having Spanish as a second language did a picture naming task and a task composed of Stroop and Simon stimuli, where (...) the effect of different overlap conditions between stimuli and responses were examined. The tasks were performed in Spanish for both groups and performance was indexed with behavioral and electrophysiological measures. We hypothesized that the bilinguals’ daily language practice in L2 reflected overlap conditions similar to the Simon task. Both naming a picture in L2 and the Simon task would involve conflict at the response level. L2 picture naming entails interference between two potential oral responses, to name in L2 vs. L1. Similarly, incongruent stimuli in the Simon task produce interference because the irrelevant dimension overlap with an incorrect response. In contrast, the manual Stroop task involves a different type of conflict between two overlapping stimulus dimensions. We predicted for these reasons a superior performance in Simon tasks over Stroop tasks for bilinguals, while monolinguals were expected to have a similar performance in both tasks. We also expected to see a correlation between the performance on the picture naming task and the Simon task in bilinguals. However, the behavioral results did not confirm these hypotheses. In fact, both groups had similar congruency effects as measured by reaction times and error rates, and there was no correlation between the picture naming and Simon task in bilinguals. Despite this, the electrophysiological data suggested a relationship between the picture naming task and the P300 congruency effect in bilinguals. Our findings provide insights into the neurocognitive bases of language and serve as a research avenue for language behaviors in bilinguals. (shrink)

Emotion is widely agreed to have two dimensions, valence and arousal. Few studies have explored the effect of emotion on conflict adaptation by considering both of these, which could have dissociate influence. The present study aimed to fill the gap as to whether emotional valence and arousal would exert dissociable influence on conflict adaptation. In the experiments, we included positive, neutral, and negative conditions, with comparable arousal between positive and negative conditions. Both positive and negative conditions have higher arousal than (...) neutral ones. In Experiment 1, by using a two-colour-word Flanker task, we found that conflict adaptation was enhanced in both positive and negative contexts compared to a neutral context. Furthermore, this effect still existed when controlling stimulus–response repetitions in Experiment 2, which used a four-colour-word Flanker task. The findings suggest emotional arousal enhances conflict adaptation, regardless of emotional valence. Thus, future studies should consider emotional arousal when studying the effect of emotion on conflict adaptation. Moreover, the unique role of the emotional context in conflict-driven cognitive control is emphasised. (shrink)

The role of cognitive control mechanisms in reducing interference from emotionally salient distractors was investigated. In two experiments, participants performed a flanker task in which target-distractor affective compatibility and cognitive load were manipulated. Differently from past studies, targets and distractors were presented at separate spatial locations and cognitive load was not domain-specific. In Experiment 1, words and faces, were used respectively as targets and distractors, whereas in Experiment 2, both targets and distractors were faces. Findings showed (...) interference from distractor processing only when cognitive load was high. The present findings indicate that, when targets and distractors are presented at different spatial locations, cognitive control mechanisms are involved in preventing interference from positive or negative distractors. The role of stimulus valence and type is also discussed with regard to different patterns of interference observed. (shrink)

It is thought that just as hunger itself, the expectancy to eat impacts attention and cognitive control toward food stimuli, but this theory has not been extensively explored at a behavioral level. In order to study the effect of expectancy to eat on attentional and cognitive control mechanisms, 63 healthy fasting participants were presented with an affective priming spatial compatibility Simon task that included both food and object distracters. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups: (...) an “immediate expectancy” group made up of participants who expected to eat immediately after the task and a “delayed expectancy” cohort made up of individuals who expected to eat a few hours later. Slower reaction times toward the food and non-food distracters and a more pronounced effect on the RTs in the incompatible condition [i.e., the Simon effect ] were noted in both groups. The effect of the food and non-food distracters on the RTs was more pronounced in the immediate with respect to the delayed expectancy group. The magnitude of the SE for the food and the non-food distracters was also greater in the immediate with respect to the delayed expectancy group. These results seem to indicate that when the expectancy to eat is short, the RTs are delayed, and the SE is more pronounced when food and non-food distracters are presented. Instead, when the expectancy to eat is more distant, the distracters have less of an effect on the RTs and the correspondence effect is smaller. Our results suggest that the expectancy to eat can modulate both attention orienting and cognitive control mechanisms in healthy fasting individuals when distracting details are competing with information processing during goal directed behavior. (shrink)

This commentary argues that theories of cognitive control risk being incomplete unless they incorporate social/emotional factors. Social factors very likely played a critical role in the evolution of human cognitive control abilities, and emotional states are the primary regulatory mechanisms of cognitive control.

As documented by Darwin 150 years ago, emotion expressed in human faces readily draws our attention and promotes sympathetic emotional reactions. How do such reactions to the expression of emotion affect our goal-directed actions? Despite the substantial advance made in the neural mechanisms of both cognitive control and emotional processing, it is not yet known well how these two systems interact. Here, we studied how emotion expressed in human faces influences cognitive control of conflict processing, spatial (...) selective attention and inhibitory control in particular, using the Eriksen flanker paradigm. In this task, participants viewed displays of a central target face flanked by peripheral faces and were asked to judge the gender of the target face; task-irrelevant emotion expressions were embedded in the target face, the flanking faces, or both. We also monitored how emotion expression affects gender judgment performance while varying the relative timing between the target and flanker faces. As previously reported, we found robust gender congruency effects, namely slower responses to the target faces whose gender was incongruent with that of the flanker faces, when the flankers preceded the target by 0.1 s. When the flankers further advanced the target by 0.3 s, however, the congruency effect vanished in most of the viewing conditions, except for when emotion was expressed only in the flanking faces or when congruent emotion was expressed in the target and flanking faces. These results suggest that emotional saliency can prolong a substantial degree of conflict by diverting bottom-up attention away from the target, and that inhibitory control on task-irrelevant information from flanking stimuli is deterred by the emotional congruency between target and flanking stimuli. (shrink)

Cognitive control is not only componential, but those components may interact in complicated ways in the service of cognitive control tasks. This complexity poses a challenge for developing an ontological description, because the mapping may not be direct between our task descriptions and true component differences reflected in indicators. To illustrate this point, I discuss two examples: (a) the relationship between adaptive gating and working memory and (b) the recent evidence for a control hierarchy. From (...) these examples, I argue that an ontological program must simultaneously seek to identify component processes and their interactions within a broader processing architecture. (shrink)

Rumination has been linked to the onset and course of depression. Theoretical models and empirical evidence suggest that deficits controlling negative material in working memory underlie rumination. However, we do not know which component of cognitive control (inhibition, shifting, or updating) contributes most to rumination, and whether different components predict the more maladaptive (brooding) versus the more adaptive (reflection) forms of rumination. We aimed to advance theory and research by examining the contribution of different facets of cognitive (...) control to the level and trajectory of brooding and reflection. At baseline, participants completed three cognitive tasks that assessed their inhibition, shifting, and updating biases, respectively. Next, using experience sampling methodology, participants rated their level of rumination and negative affect nine times during the 48 h after their most stressful exam. At each time point, higher levels of brooding, but not reflection, predicted higher levels of negative affect at the next time point. Furthermore, several facets of shifting and inhibition, but not updating, predicted brooding immediately after the exam and its trajectory of change over 48 h. Additionally, difficulty inhibiting neutral words predicted both brooding and reflection. These findings inform theoretical models describing the role of cognitive control in brooding and reflection. (shrink)

Recent studies suggest that instrumental hypnosis is a useful experimental tool to investigate emotional and language processing effects. However, the capacity of hypnotic suggestions to intervene during the response inhibition of emotional words remains elusive. This study investigated whether hypnotic suggestion can improve the inhibition of prepotent negative word responses in an emotional Hayling sentence completion task. High-suggestible participants performed a computerised emotional Hayling task. They were first asked to select the appropriate words ending highly predictable sentences among two propositions (...) (initiation part), and then to select the filler words that did not end the sentences correctly (inhibition part). Half of the expected final words had a negative emotional valence, while the other half was neutral. The task was performed in a control condition (without suggestion) and with a hypnotic suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity. The results revealed that hypnotic suggestion (compared to the control condition) hastened response times on negative final words in the inhibition part, showing that hypnotic suggestion can enhance cognitive control over prepotent negative word responses in a sentence completion task. We suggest that this modulation stems from a reduction in the emotional relevance of the final words caused by the hypnotic suggestion. (shrink)

Dreyfus and Dreyfus’ influential phenomenological analysis of skill acquisition proposes that expert performance is guided by non-cognitive responses which are fast, effortless and apparently intuitive in nature. Although this model has been criticised for over-emphasising the role that intuition plays in facilitating skilled performance, it does recognise that on occasions a form of ‘detached deliberative rationality’ may be used by experts to improve their performance. However, Dreyfus and Dreyfus see no role for calculative problem solving or deliberation when performance (...) is going well. In the current paper, we draw on empirical evidence, insights from athletes, and phenomenological description to argue that ‘continuous improvement’ among experts is mediated by cognitive control in three distinct sporting situations. We conclude by arguing that Sutton et al. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 42, 78–103 ‘applying intelligence to the reflexes’ approach may help to elucidate the process by which expert performers achieve continuous improvement through analytical/mindful behaviour during training and competition. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated whether control of the conflict between incongruent heuristic and analytical answer options in a reasoning task is modulated by the presence of conflict on previous trials. In two experiments, we found that the incongruency of the previous trial has a significant effect on the control exhibited on the current trial. Our data also showed that this adaptation effect is modulated by the incongruency of the previous series of trials. These results demonstrate the same (...) control adaptation effects for a reasoning task as observed for standard response interference tasks. Coinciding control effects in the two research areas suggest that cognitive control might be an important mechanism underlying performance on reasoning tasks. Based on these results we argue that the study of cognitive control in reasoning could potentially facilitate the refinement of empirical predictions and provide a new tool to explore the exertion of top-down control in human thinking. (shrink)

Research traditions on cognition and depression focus on relatively unconnected aspects of cognitive functioning. On one hand, the neuropsychological perspective has concentrated on cognitive control difficulties as a prominent feature of this condition. On the other hand, the clinical psychology perspective has focused on cognitive biases and repetitive negative patterns of thinking for emotional information. A review of the literature from both fields reveals that difficulties are more evident for mood-congruent materials, suggesting that cognitive (...) class='Hi'>control difficulties interact with cognitive biases to hinder cognitive switching, working memory updating, and inhibition of irrelevant information. Connecting research from these two traditions, we propose a novel integrative cognitive model of depression in which the interplay between mood-congruent cognitive control difficulties, cognitive biases, and rumination may ultimately lead to ineffective emotion-regulation strategies to downregulate negative mood and upregulate positive mood. (shrink)

Cognitive effort is thought to be familiar in everyday life, ubiquitous across multiple variations of task and circumstance, and integral to cost/benefit computations that are themselves central to the proper functioning of cognitive control. In particular, cognitive effort is thought to be closely related to the assessment of cognitive control’s costs. I argue here that the construct of cognitive effort, as it is deployed in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, is problematically unclear. The (...) result is that talk of cognitive effort may paper over significant disagreement regarding the nature of cognitive effort, and its key functions for cognitive control. I highlight key points of disagreement, and several open questions regarding what causes cognitive effort, what cognitive effort represents, cognitive effort’s relationship to action, and cognitive effort’s relationship to consciousness. I also suggest that pluralism about cognitive effort – that cognitive effort may manifest as a range of intentional or non-intentional actions the function of which is to promote greater success at paradigmatic cognitive control tasks – may be a fruitful and irenic way to conceive of cognitive effort. Finally, I suggest that recent trends in work on cognitive control suggests that we might fruitfully conceive of cognitive effort as one key node in a complex network of mental value, and that studying this complex network may illuminate the nature of cognitive control, and the role of consciousness in cognitive control’s proper functioning. (shrink)

Cognitive control is a set of mechanisms that help us process conflicting stimuli and maintain goal-relevant behaviour. According to the Affective Signalling Hypothesis, conflicting stimuli are aversive and thus elicit (negative) affect, moreover – to avoid aversive signals – affective and cognitive systems work together by increasing control and thus, drive conflict adaptation. Several studies have found that affective stimuli can indeed modulate conflict adaptation, however, there is currently no evidence that phasic affective states not triggered (...) by conflict also trigger improved cognitive control. To investigate this possibility, we intermixed trials of a conflict task and trials involving the passive viewing of emotional words. We tested whether affective states induced by affective words in a given trial trigger improved cognitive control in a subsequent conflict trial. Applying Bayesian analysis, the results of four experiments supported the lack of adaptation to aversive signals, both in terms of valence and arousal. These results suggest that phasic affective states by themselves are not sufficient to elicit an increase in control. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 327-343, April 2022.

The primrose path and prisoner's dilemma paradigms may require cognitive (executive) control: The active maintenance of context representations in lateral prefrontal cortex to provide top-down support for specific behaviors in the face of short delays or stronger response tendencies. This perspective suggests further tests of whether altruism is a type of self-control, including brain imaging, induced affect, and dual-task studies.

Cognition is context-sensitive, as the same sensory information is processed differently depending on its context (e.g., on its probabilistic association with goal-directed actions and their outcomes). Despite this, the concept of context in studies of higher-order cognitive processes, like cognitive control, is often simplified to nominal stimulus categories (like a target vs. distractor). Here we propose that quantifying contextual information to model cognitive demands is (1) fruitful as it can provide novel insight into the nature of (...) cognitive control, (2) accessible as simple probability models offer a tool for quantifying context and (3) analytically useful as a fine-grained quantification of context can be entered into more complex models as regressors that allow a direct way of appropriately exploring many of the defining tenants of cognitive control (e.g., rapidly changing trial-by-trial neural dynamics). Here, we briefly describe the logic of using context-sensitive measures of cognitive control and highlight recent studies from this approach using simple information theory metrics. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) integrated model of production and comprehension includes no explicit role for nonlinguistic cognitive processes. Yet, how domain-general cognitive functions contribute to language processing has become clearer with well-specified theories and supporting data. We therefore believe that their account can benefit by incorporating functions like working memory and cognitive control into a unified model of language processing.

We review the relationships between language, inner speech, and cognitive control in children and young adults, focusing on the domain of cognitive flexibility. We address the role that inner speech plays in flexibly shifting between tasks, addressing whether it is used to represent task rules, provide a reminder of task order, or aid in task retrieval. We also consider whether the development of inner speech in childhood serves to drive the development of cognitive flexibility. We conclude (...) that there is a close association between inner speech and cognitive flexibility in both adults and children. Experimental work has begun to specify in detail the role that inner speech might play in adult performance, suggesting that language plays a facilitative but not essential role in representing and activating the relevant task set, processes that occur on both switch and nonswitch trials. While developmental studies suggest an increase in the spontaneous use of verbal strategies with age, implying an increase in top-down control during shifting, experimental work is needed to specify more precisely the nature and precise role that inner speech plays in the development of cognitive control through childhood. (shrink)

Emerging research shows a strong connection between brain areas governing cognition and motor behavior. Yet, research investigating the negative aftereffects of cognitive control exertion on task performance has not considered the potential role of areas governing motor behavior. The present study investigated the effects of high cognitive control exertion on task self-efficacy and exercise performance in children. A secondary purpose was to investigate whether motor coordination influences the change in exercise performance differently following low versus high (...) cognitive control exertion. Participants (N = 70) performed two isometric handgrip endurance trials separated by a Stroop task, which was either congruent (low cognitive control) or incongruent (high cognitive control). Motor coordination was assessed prior to the first endurance trial. Task self-efficacy for performing the second endurance trial was assessed following the Stroop task. Participants in the high cognitive control condition reported lower task self-efficacy and showed a reduction in endurance exercise performance. Task self-efficacy mediated the cognitive control – performance relationship. Participants scoring lower on motor coordination showed the greatest declines in exercise performance following high cognitive control, whereas motor coordination did not affect performance following low cognitive control. The results of this study provide evidence that task self-efficacy and exercise performance are also negatively affected in children following high cognitive control, and interestingly, these effects are exacerbated among those scoring lower in motor coordination. We recommend future research investigate motor coordination as a potential mechanism for the reductions in both cognitive and physical task performance following the prolonged exertion of high cognitive control. (shrink)