The (in)flexibility of control adaptations

控制适应的（不）灵活性

• 批准号: 517870893
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Gesine Dreisbach
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Psychologie II (Allgemeine Psychologie II)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/517870893?language=en
• 关键词: flexibility; control; adaptations

Adaptive control forms the basis of cognitive and behavioral flexibility. It is sensitive to normal aging and its malfunction is closely related to neurological and psychiatric conditions. In general, human beings have the astonishing ability to flexibly adapt action and thought in response to changing requirements from the environment. At the same time, they can be surprisingly stuck in set, for example when they continue using a formerly successful but no longer adaptive processing strategy. Such stuck-in-set phenomena, originally reported in problem solving tasks (Luchins, 1942) are not restricted to neuropsychological abnormalities like perseveration in frontal lobe patients but have recently also been reported for control strategies in context processing- and response conflict-tasks in healthy individuals (e.g., Abrahamse, Duthoo, Notebaert, & Risko, 2013; Hefer & Dreisbach, 2017). In this research project, we intend to investigate two so far highly neglected phenomena that expose a weakness of the much-vaunted cognitive flexibility: (1) The asymmetrical costs when switching between a shielded and a more relaxed mode of control, which show that it can be harder to let go from a shielding control mode and switch to a more relaxed control mode than vice versa. And (2) the observation that the flexibility to adapt control to different context demands is further limited by the volatility and frequency of context changes. The importance of adaptive control for cognitive and behavioral flexibility highlights the need for understanding the underlying cognitive mechanisms (e.g., the flexible (dis)engagement of different control states), which may offer fertile grounds for subsequent translational research.

适应性控制是认知和行为灵活性的基础。它对正常衰老敏感，其功能障碍与神经和精神疾病密切相关。总的来说，人类具有惊人的能力，能够灵活地调整行动和思想，以应对环境不断变化的要求。与此同时，他们可能会令人惊讶地陷入困境，例如，当他们继续使用以前成功但不再适应的处理策略时。最初在问题解决任务中报告的这种固定现象（Luchins，1942）并不限于额叶患者的神经心理异常，如持续性，但最近也报告了健康个体的上下文处理和反应冲突任务中的控制策略（例如，Abrahamse，Duthoo，Notebaert，& Risko，2013; Hefer &德赖斯巴赫，2017）。在这个研究项目中，我们打算调查两个迄今为止被高度忽视的现象，这些现象暴露了备受吹捧的认知灵活性的弱点：（1）在屏蔽控制模式和更放松的控制模式之间切换时的不对称成本，这表明从屏蔽控制模式切换到更放松的控制模式比从更放松的控制模式切换到屏蔽控制模式更难。以及（2）观察到，使控制适应不同上下文需求的灵活性进一步受到上下文变化的波动性和频率的限制。适应性控制对认知和行为灵活性的重要性突出了理解潜在认知机制的必要性（例如，不同控制状态的灵活（脱离）接合），这可以为随后的转化研究提供肥沃的土壤。