Abstract
Stimulus-induced response conflict (e.g., in Simon or Stroop tasks) is often reduced after conflict trials—the Gratton effect. It is generally assumed that this effect is due to a strengthening of the representation of the current intention or goal, which in turn increases the degree of stimulus and/or response control. Recent evidence suggests that the motivational signal driving the Gratton effect might be affective in nature. If so, individual differences in either the strength of affective signals and/or the ability to interpret such signals might explain individual differences in cognitive-control adjustments as reflected in the Gratton effect. We tested this hypothesis by relating individual sizes of the Gratton effect in a Simon task to scores on the affective and the cognitive dimension of the Bermond/Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ)—which we assumed to assess individual differences in affective-signal strength and ability to interpret affective signals, respectively. Results show that the cognitive, but not the affective dimension predicted control adjustment, while the accuracy of heartbeat detection was only (and only weakly) related to online control. This suggests that the motivation to fine-tune one's cognitive-control operations is mediated by, and may depend on one's ability to interpret one's own affective signals.
Highlights
Traditional views on the role of motivation in action control have focused on the process of decision-making, that is, on the selection of goals that an agent intends to pursue (e.g., Kahneman, 2011) and, in few cases, on the evaluation of performed actions with respect to that goal (e.g., Miller et al, 1960; Achtziger and Gollwitzer, 2008)
As the Simon effect is sensitive to the overall reaction times (RTs) level (Hommel, 1993), participants with mean RTs exceeding 2.5 SD were excluded; this led to the exclusion of two participants [females; Mean(Cognitive Dimension) = 50, SD = 4, Mean(Affective Dimension) = 46, SD = 9]
Given the evidence that this signal is related to negative affect, we reasoned that people may differ with respect to either the strength of the signal provided by affect-related neural systems or the individual ability to interpret signals of that sort (e.g., Schachter, 1971)
Summary
Traditional views on the role of motivation in action control have focused on the process of decision-making, that is, on the selection of goals that an agent intends to pursue (e.g., Kahneman, 2011) and, in few cases, on the evaluation of performed actions with respect to that goal (e.g., Miller et al, 1960; Achtziger and Gollwitzer, 2008). The Gratton effect consists in the observation that the size of such compatibility effects varies as a function of the compatibility in the previous trial: the compatibility effect in the present trial is commonly larger after a compatible trial than after an incompatible trial (Gratton et al, 1992; Stürmer et al, 2002) This observation has been taken to reflect the conflict-induced adaptation of cognitive control (Botvinick et al, 2001): control relaxes after a trial without conflict (i.e., after a compatible trial) but is strengthened after a conflict trial (i.e., after an incompatible trial), so that control is “hit” more by conflict after compatible than incompatible trials. Even though there are reasons to assume that the Gratton effect is not a pure measure of adaptivity (Hommel et al, 2004; Schmidt and De Houwer, 2011), the current understanding is that it does reflect control adaptations to some degree (e.g., Verguts and Notebaert, 2009)
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