Are there control processes, and (if so) can they be studied?

Abstract

Generally, so-called control processes are thought to be necessary when we must perform one out of several competing actions. Some examples include performance of a less well-practiced action instead of a well-practiced one (prepotency); learning a new action (novelty); and rapidly switching from one action to another (task-switching). While it certainly is difficult to perform the desired action in these circumstances, it is less clear that a separate set of processes (e.g., control processes) are necessary to explain the observed behavior. Another way to approach the study of control processes is to investigate physiological dependent measures (e.g., electrophysiological or neuroimaging measures). Although these offer another avenue of inquiry into control processes, they have yet to furnish unambiguous evidence that control processes exist. While this might suggest that there are no control processes, it is also possible that our methods are insufficiently sensitive to measure control processes. We have investigated this latter possibility using tasks that are neuroanatomically distinct, though within the same modality (vision). This approach did not yield evidence for a separable set of control processes. However, recent works using a task-switching paradigm in which subjects switch between a visual and an auditory task suggest that switching both task and modality may be importantly different than switching task within a given modality. This may represent a way forward in the study of control processes.

Crossmodal action: modality matters

“…These include domain-specific working memory interference (Hazeltine & Wifall, 2011), strategic effects based on task context (Israel & Cohen, 2011), modality-specific processing pathways (Schumacher et al, 2011;Stephan & Koch, 2011), interference based on common (spatial) codes (Atchley et al, 2011) or on shared visual modules (shape, color, word, see Israel & Cohen, 2011), and RSB models (at least for results within the PRP paradigm, see Israel & Cohen, 2011;Stelzel & Schubert, 2011). Further papers additionally discuss the role of cognitive control processes (Wylie et al, 2011), and within-and between-trial crosstalk (Huestegge, 2011).…”

Interference effects of stimulus–response modality pairings in dual tasks and their robustness

“…In the case of abstract code crosstalk, the pre-activation of a prepotent modality system results in an overlap between modalityspecific processing systems that needs to be resolved to respond with the correct motor effector. In both cases, additional coordination demands for capacity-limited central processing should be involved (but see Wylie, Sumowski, & Murray, 2011), which may be reflected in increased processing times at short SOA. As discussed for Experiment 2, response selection difficulty might further affect the degree to which these abstract central processing codes need to access certain processing modules simultaneously, and this might additionally affect the resulting interference effects.…”