Cognitive control is quickly adapted to actual task requirements despite misleading context cues—Evidence from the N2, CRN, and ERN

Abstract

Cognitive control is flexibly adapted to task requirements in healthy individuals. Medio‐frontal negativities in the event‐related potential of the electroencephalogram can serve as indicators of cognitive control. With increasing conflict frequency, stimulus‐locked control, as indexed by the N2, is increased and response‐locked control, as indexed by the correct‐related negativity, is reduced. On the behavioral level, this shift is associated with improved conflict resolution as evident in reduced response times and error rates in incompatible trials and a reduced response time congruency effect. Cognitive control adaptation might be implemented through experience‐based task sets specifying advantageous processing strategies. Here, we investigated whether the cognitive control task set will be sustained when coupled with a contextual cue, even when the initial task requirements are no longer present. A flanker task with two conflict frequency conditions (25% incompatible and 75% incompatible trials) was presented. In the training phase, the conflict frequency conditions were paired with a distinct context cue (i.e., background color). In the test phase, the previously associated cues were again presented, but conflict frequency was identical in both conditions (50% incompatible trials). Although typical cognitive control adaptation was observed in the training phase on the behavioral and event‐related potentials level, this pattern was not sustained in the test phase. Thus, the present study provides further evidence that cognitive control is flexibly adapted to task requirements even in the presence of misleading cues.

Effects of a three-week executive control training on adaptation to task difficulty and emotional interference

“…Interestingly, this mirrors the main effect of the training on these two components: After training, the N2 was increased, while the CRN was reduced. As both components share a similar topography it has been argued that they are generated by the same brain region and reflect similar functional processes [8,10,11,[14][15][16][17]26]. In this line of thought, complementary modulation of these two ERP components may reflect a shift in the primary time-point of control application.…”

“…In-depth analysis of behavioral data by response time distributional analysis [ 24 ] indicates that the proportion congruency effect is caused by increased interference inhibition [ 10 , 18 , 19 , 25 ]. On the ERP level, this is accompanied by an increase in conflict-related cognitive control, as reflected in the N2 amplitude, and a decrease in response-related cognitive control as reflected in the CRN amplitude in incompatible trials [ 10 , 11 , 16 , 26 ].…”

The impact of distractor relevance on the strength and timing of cognitive control: Evidence from delta plots and diffusion model analyses.

“…More precisely, the results revealed within a single study that varying the (relative) relevance of features in a given context affects both the focus on (primary task) target processing and the strength and suppression of activation related to potentially distracting elements in this context. Previous evidence of enhanced target processing (e.g., Egner & Hirsch, 2005) and distractor suppression (e.g., Ridderinkhof et al, 2004) in conflict tasks was typically obtained with manipulations of the harmfulness of distractor-based activation (e.g., by varying the proportion of incongruent trials; Bugg & Crump, 2012; Gratton et al, 1992; Grützmann et al, 2022; Hartmann et al, 2022; Jost et al, 2022; J. Luo et al, 2022; Spinelli & Lupker, 2023).…”