In real-world situations, people are often faced with the complex task of deciding which of many potential variables are affecting their own or others' behavior, as well as noting which specific aspects of behavior are being affected. Although it is common for professionals who encounter such conditions to claim that they acquire accurate and specific knowledge from their experience, it is unclear that such confidence is justified. Using a managerial task, we examined participants' ability to learn how various interventions affect various aspects of their employees' performance. The results of three experiments reveal that although participants appear to avoid prescribing an intervention that has a positive effect on a primary performance measure and a negative side effect on a secondary measure, when asked directly about the impact of the intervention, they respond by reducing their judgments of its positive impact. This was true regardless of whether participants indicated clear knowledge of its negative side effect (Experiment 3) or did not (Experiments 1 and 2). Thus, participants appear to be automatically integrating across the effects on different outcome measures.

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Cognitive control is a broad construct that defines a set of processes involved in maintaining task goals in response to interference. Working memory capacity (WMC) is a similarly defined construct that shares many overlapping functions with cognitive control. The studies presented used controlled forms of interference to identify limits, or boundary conditions, that could help clarify the relationship between cognitive control and WMC. Experiment 1 used context effects to manipulate how interference and cognitive control could overlap. A spatial Stroop/Simon task was used in which proportion congruency for each subset (e.g., Simon or spatial Stroop) was manipulated to produce a 2 x 2 arrangement. Error rates, reaction times (RT), post-error slowing, and conflict adaptation were measured. A composite WMC score was formed from multiple working memory tasks. The results demonstrate that WMC is recruited globally by proactive control processes to help maintain context-specific control and that conflict adaptation effects are not always context-specific. Experiment 2 used isolated forms of interference to examine cognitive control responses in a more structured, but limited, task. The spatial Stroop and Simon components were separated and assessed 48hrs apart. The same variables were measured. Results showed that Simon and spatial Stroop differ in proactive control, but not reactive control measures. No correlation with WMC was found in Experiment 2.

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