Learning to Adapt Cognitive Control Across Paradigms: Evidence for Domain-General Control Strategies

The success of many of our activities depends on how we learn to adapt cognitive control: Usually, we focus and redirect our behavior towards our objectives when facing a particularly challenging task or when irrelevant information activates a response that conflicts with our goals, while we relax and let events guide us when the task is familiar or undemanding. Although most of the theories defining cognitive control tend to describe it as a domain-general construct, several researchers posit that each task elicits different types of control adaptations, thus implying that the control adjustments learned in one task might be purely task-specific. Indeed, some studies failed to find a transfer of control preparation strategies between tasks, while others have even questioned whether individuals can prepare for response conflict overall. To provide clarification, this project aims to (1) understand whether people can learn to employ prior control demands to prepare for subsequent task’s demands and (2) understand whether control adaptation rules (or strategies) devised in one task are indeed task-specific, or they can be transferred to other paradigms. In summary, our results provide evidence of transfer of control adaptation rules between tasks requiring control, and maltransfer of these control strategies towards tasks that do not involve variations in control demands. Moreover, our findings suggest that control adaptations rely on potentially generalizable learning strategies, which can encompass both bottom-up associative learning and a top-down strategic proactive mechanism. Overall, the outcomes of this research project are consistent with a domain-general view of cognitive control adaptations.