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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. Public Significance Statement: Emotional conflict such as irony, in which the emotion represented by a person's face and the person's voice do not match, is an inherent part of human social interactions. We investigate whether the control mechanisms of our cognitive system that suppress interference from task-irrelevant distractions and lead to control-related adjustments are confined to cognitive disturbances or whether they can also be applied to tasks that elicit emotional conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional information captures attention due to privileged processing. Consequently, performance in cognitive tasks declines (i.e. emotional distraction, ED). Therefore, shielding current goals from ED is essential for adaptive goal-directed- behaviour. It has been shown that ED is reduced when participants recruit cognitive control before or after the presentation of an emotional negative distractor. Following up on this, we asked first, whether cognitive control of ED is negative-valence-specific or valence-general. A valence-general-account predicts that control shields against distracting influence of emotion, irrespective of the specific valence. In contrast, a negative-valence-specific-account predicts that control interacts with the valence and ED is reduced for negative stimuli only. Second, we asked whether this effect of ED differs between control modes operating on different time scales (i.e. proactively or reactively). To test this, we manipulated emotional distractor valence (positive/high-arousal; negative/high-arousal; neutral/low-arousal) and assessed how control interacts with ED. Results showed that ED was reduced for negative and positive valent stimuli when control was triggered before (i.e. proactive control, nExp1 = 141, between-subject-design) and after (reactive control, nExp2 = 37, within-subject-design) the emotional stimuli. Accordingly, control blocks off high-arousing emotional distractors from interfering with goal-directed-actions, irrespective of their valence (i.e. valence-general-account) and for both, proactive and reactive control modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. • Prolonged time spent seated increases chronic health conditions. • Standing is associated with physical and mental health consequences. • Studies reveal conflicting results on the effect of standing on cognitive control. • A meta-analysis shows limitations of an influence of standing on cognitive control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]