Mood states influence cognitive control: the case of conflict adaptation

Abstract

Conflict adaptation can be measured by the "congruency sequence effect", denoting the reduction of congruency effects after incongruent trials (where response conflict occurs) relative to congruent trials (without response conflict). Recently, it has been reported that conflict adaptation is larger in negative mood than in positive mood (van Steenbergen et al., Psychological Science 21:1629-1634, 2010). We conducted two experiments further investigating this important finding. Two different interference paradigms were applied to measure conflict adaptation: Experiment 1 was a Flanker task, Experiment 2 was a Stroop-like task. To get as pure a measure of conflict adaptation as possible, we minimized the influence of trial-to-trial priming effects by excluding all kinds of stimulus repetitions. Mood states were induced by presenting film clips with emotional content prior to the interference task. Three mood states were manipulated between subjects: amused, anxious, and sad. Across both interference paradigms, we consistently found conflict adaptation in negative, but not in positive mood. Taken together with van Steenbergen et al. (Psychological Science 21:1629-1634, 2010) findings, the results suggest that the negative-mood-triggered increase in conflict adaptation is a general phenomenon that occurs independently of the particular mood-induction procedure and interference paradigm involved.

The face of control: Corrugator supercilii tracks aversive conflict signals in the service of adaptive cognitive control

“…Relatedly, inhibition of a dominant response tendency can also trigger stimulus devaluation (Wessel, O'Doherty, Berkebeile, Lindemann, & Aron, 2014), which corroborates a tight relationship between the evaluative and cognitive control processes. Furthermore, studies have shown that affective stimuli can modulate conflict adaptation, providing further evidence for a functional role of affect for control (Kuhbandner & Zehetleitner, 2011;Schuch & Koch, 2015;Schuch, Zweerings, Hirsch, & Koch, 2017;van Steenbergen, Band, & Hommel, 2009 but see Dignath, Janczyk, & Eder, 2017;Yamaguchi & Nishimura, 2019, Exp. 2 & 3).…”

Shifts in target modality cause attentional reset: Evidence from sequential modulation of crossmodal congruency effects

“…The first empirical evidence for this sequential modulation was reported by Gratton, Coles, and Donchin (1992). This pattern has proven robust across tasks and paradigms (see Egner, 2007, for a review), although the size of the effect can be manipulated by factors such as reward (van Steenbergen, Band, & Hommel, 2009) or mood states (Schuch & Koch, 2015;van Steenbergen, Band, & Hommel, 2010).…”

Brain functional connectivity dynamics in the aftermaths of affective and cognitive events

“…1A). Based on previous behavioral (van Steenbergen et al 2010;Schuch and Koch 2014;Gendolla et al 2015;van Steenbergen 2015) and neuroimaging work (Eryilmaz et al 2011;van Steenbergen et al 2015;Borchardt et al 2017;Song et al 2017;Young et al 2017), we predicted that negative affective contexts would cause distinctive changes among functionally integrated brain-wide networks at rest, including the DMN, SN, FPCN, and possibly other limbic networks (e.g., centered on amygdala and insula), with particular temporal fluctuations and distinctive distribution as a function of the preceding events. This allowed us to investigate several key questions including: (1) whether negative affect episodes produce lingering changes in subsequent brain activity and connectivity at rest, (2) whether these neural changes are also sensitive to the cognitive demands of executive control tasks, and (3) whether performance in executive control tasks themselves is altered by negative affect.…”

“…Cognitive control is defined as the flexible regulation of behavior in the pursuit of internal goals (Egner 2007;Helfrich and Knight 2016), and commonly assessed by Stroop and Flanker tasks where responding to goal-relevant targets is tested in the presence of distracting information (Botvinick et al 2001;Schmidt et al 2015). Negative emotions have been shown to alter cognitive control in such tasks at both the behavioral (van Steenbergen et al 2010;Schuch et al 2012;Brown et al 2014;Schuch and Koch 2014) and neural levels (Egner et al 2008;Etkin et al 2011;Braem et al 2013;Brown et al 2014;Song et al 2017; see also van Steenbergen 2015 for a review). Here we built on previous work showing an impact of negative affective episodes on subsequent brain resting state (Eryilmaz et al 2011) and cognitive control performance (Schuch and Koch 2014;van Steenbergen et al 2015), by probing for modulations of intrinsic functional brain connectivity and dynamics at the whole brain level following both affective and cognitive challenges.…”

“…Negative emotions have been shown to alter cognitive control in such tasks at both the behavioral (van Steenbergen et al 2010;Schuch et al 2012;Brown et al 2014;Schuch and Koch 2014) and neural levels (Egner et al 2008;Etkin et al 2011;Braem et al 2013;Brown et al 2014;Song et al 2017; see also van Steenbergen 2015 for a review). Here we built on previous work showing an impact of negative affective episodes on subsequent brain resting state (Eryilmaz et al 2011) and cognitive control performance (Schuch and Koch 2014;van Steenbergen et al 2015), by probing for modulations of intrinsic functional brain connectivity and dynamics at the whole brain level following both affective and cognitive challenges. By combining both stimulation types and leveraging the CAP methodology, we aimed to uncover, first, how the recruitment of cognitive control processes may be influenced by negative affect, and second, how resting state connectivity patterns are modified by negative affect alone or by associated cognitive effort.…”