Executive functions: Are Amodal Representations Involved in Proactive Control?

日常行为的一个关键方面是我们保持目标导向行为的能力，以及相当轻松地在受控和自动处理之间切换的能力。除了对信息处理的短期、反应性调整外，认知控制还实施了主动机制来配置认知系统，以实现与背景相适应的高效表现。我们考察了主动控制是否作用于非波动性表征(即，刺激、反应和任务不特定)。首先，在感觉运动冲突任务中，我们考察了跨通道和跨任务的主动控制效应。如果非情态表征是主动调节的基础，这应该会导致领域通用的迁移效应，我们计划将这些主动效应与反应性控制机制(似乎依赖于更多的情态表征)触发的效应分离。还将使用一个数学模型来进一步说明这些调整背后的机制。其次，我们的目标是通过研究语言处理过程中的主动控制调节来推广我们的方法。

A crucial aspect of everyday behavior is our ability to maintain goal-oriented behavior and to switch between controlled and automated processing rather effortlessly. Besides short-term, reactive adjustments to information processing, it is assumed that cognitive control implements also proactive mechanisms to configure the cognitive system in such a way that context-appropriate and efficient performance is achieved. We examine whether proactive control operates on amodal representations (i.e., stimulus-, response-, and task-unspecific). First, in sensorimotor conflict tasks, we investigate cross-modal and cross-task proactive control effects. If amodal representations underlie proactive adjustments, this should lead to domain-general transfer effects, and we plan to dissociate these proactive effects from those triggered by reactive control mechanisms (which appear to depend on more modal representations). A mathematical model will be used to further specify the mechanisms underlying these adjustments as well. Second, we aim to generalize our approach by investigating proactive control adjustments during language processing.