Generalizability of control across cognitive and emotional conflict.

People can learn to control their thoughts and emotions. The scientific study of control has been conducted mostly independently for cognitive and emotional conflicts. However, recent theoretical proposals suggest a close link between emotional and cognitive control processes. Indeed, mounting evidence from clinical sciences, social and personality psychology, and developmental neuroscience suggests that the ability to control thoughts and behavior goes hand in hand with the ability to control emotions. Yet, the precise interface between control over cognition and emotions remains controversial. The present study investigates the question whether control is a general-purpose mechanism or rather a set of domain-specific mechanisms. Following previous research, we tested participants' control in a cognitive and an emotional Stroop task and assessed the congruency sequence effect (CSE) which has been taken as a marker of cognitive or (implicit) emotional control, respectively. Going beyond previous research, we asked how control in one domain (e.g., cognitive) interacts with control in the other domain (e.g., emotional) on a trial-by-trial basis. In four experiments (N = 259) presented participants with a task-switching design that intermixed cognitive and emotional conflicts. This procedure produced significant CSEs across cognitive-emotional domains, suggesting that control can interact across domains. However, effect sizes of within-domain CSEs were twice as large, indicating that control is also domain-specific. These results neither support the general-purpose account nor the domain-specificity hypothesis of control. Rather, a hybrid account fits the data best, which also reconciles previous behavioral and neurophysiological findings, suggesting domain-general and specific processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Does body posture reduce the Stroop effect? Evidence from two conceptual replications and a meta-analysis.

Standing compared to sitting, for instance at work, is associated with positive physical and mental health consequences. Indeed, studies suggest that performance in cognitive conflict tasks (e.g., Color Stroop tasks) is improved when subjects perform the task while standing compared to sitting (Rosenbaum et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2019). However, a recent study failed to replicate these findings in five attempts (Caron et al., 2020). We aimed to shed light on these discrepant results by means of two conceptual replications and a meta-analysis. Replication experiments showed typical congruency effects in the Color Stroop task, but failed to find any influence of posture on the Stroop effect even when we subjected data to a more sensitive analysis that controlled for individual variances between participants. Additionally, an explorative Bayesian analysis confirmed that both replications provided strong evidence against an interaction between body posture and the Stroop effect. Meta-analytic results showed that the confidence interval of the overall effect size for a modulation of the Stroop effect by body posture includes the null. Together, our results question whether standing modulates the Stroop effect in Color Stroop tasks and points out limitations of the influence of body posture on cognitive control tasks.

Limitations of cognitive control on emotional distraction - Congruency in the Color Stroop task does not modulate the Emotional Stroop effect.

Emotional information receives prioritized processing over concurrent cognitive processes. This can lead to distraction if emotional information has to be ignored. In the cognitive domain, mechanisms have been described that allow control of (cognitive) distractions. However, whether similar cognitive control mechanisms also can attenuate emotional distraction is an active area of research. This study asked whether cognitive control (triggered in the Color Stroop task) attenuates emotional distraction in the Emotional Stroop task. Theoretical accounts of cognitive control, and the Emotional Stroop task alike, predict such an interaction for tasks that employ the same relevant (e.g., color-naming) and irrelevant (e.g., word-reading) dimension. In an alternating-runs design with Color and Emotional Stroop tasks changing from trial to trial, we analyzed the impact of proactive and reactive cognitive control on Emotional Stroop effects. Four experiments manipulated predictability of congruency and emotional stimuli. Overall, results showed congruency effects in Color Stroop tasks and Emotional Stroop effects. Moreover, we found a spillover of congruency effects and emotional distraction to the other task, indicating that processes specific to one task impacted to the other task. However, Bayesian analyses and a mini-meta-analysis across experiments weigh against the predicted interaction between cognitive control and emotional distraction. The results point out limitations of cognitive control to block off emotional distraction, questioning views that assume a close interaction between cognitive control and emotional processing.