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To meet cognitive control demands of everyday life, we must continuously adapt our behavior, balancing cognitive stability and flexibility. According to the control-dilemma framework, stable goal-shielding and flexible goal-shifting control modes entail opposing performance costs and benefits. In a within-subjects design, we aim to induce both control modes by manipulating the frequency of task-switches in a cued task-switching paradigm. A high (75%) task-switch proportion of trial transitions in the shifting condition demands flexible shifting between tasks, whereas a lower proportion (25%) permits a more stable control mode within shielding blocks. In both conditions, we will intersperse identical short “diagnostic” test trial sequences with 50% taskswitches, assuming that the contextually induced control modes will persist during these test blocks. In line with the assumption of a performance cost-benefit trade-off between goalshielding and goal-shifting, we expect higher switch costs and reduced interference costs in the shielding condition, and vice versa in the shifting condition. At a neural level, we aim to obtain fMRI indicators to decode the underlying neural patterns of both control modes, investigating whether the respective states are reflected in more or less stable neural task representations (as indicated by enhanced or reduced decoding accuracy in shielding and shifting blocks, respectively). We predict that the shielding-shifting trade-off will show in the brain signals as more stable task representations and enhanced decoding accuracy in the shielding relative to the shifting condition. Moreover, we will assess whether more stable control modes are also reflected in more stable dynamic whole-brain functional connectivity patterns.

Everyday life confronts us with situations requiring us to flexibly shift between goals or to shield our intentions from distractions to varying degrees. Control dilemma theory posits that individuals adjust their balance between goal shielding and shifting dynamically to meet changing control demands. These different control modes are assumed to afford complementary performance benefits and costs. Despite growing interest in the mechanisms underlying cognitive control regulations, only few studies have directly tested this assumption and recent findings have even called into question the notion of an obligatory shielding-shifting trade-off (Geddert & Egner, 2022). The objectives of our study were to investigate whether such control adjustments are under volitional control, to test the assumption of a shielding-shifting trade-off, and to examine if the task relevance of distracting information moderates control mode adaptations. To this end, we used two task-switching paradigms differing in the informative content of distractors. In a within-subjects design, we instructed participants either to focus their attention on the current task (goal shielding) or to try to switch flexibly between tasks (goal shifting) to maximize their monetary reward. Participants adjusted their goal shifting according to the instruction, as indicated by reduced task-switch costs in the shifting condition. However, participants did not succeed in implementing the shielding instruction, i.e., participants’ performance was equally impaired by interfering information in both conditions. In line with the control dilemma theory, participants displayed the expected pattern of reciprocal performance benefits and costs. We further found no effect of distractor relevance on control mode adaptations.

Though there is evidence that task-irrelevant emotional stimuli affect processes that are important for successful prospective remembering such as cognitive control as well as attention, and while a growing body of research suggests that prospective memory (PM) performance is influenced by emotional PM cues, it remains unclear whether task-irrelevant emotional stimuli also affect PM performance. In this study, we thus want to investigate the effects of emotional distraction on PM performance. To test this, we will modify the paradigm used by Goschke and Dreisbach (2008), in which a PM task is embedded in an on-going spatial-compatibility task. The study will be conducted as an online experiment using the online plattform Labvanced (Goeke et al., 2017). In each of the trials, an arrow will appear at the upper, lower, left or right position. The arrow can also face in different directions that are either compatible with its position or incompatible (i.e., the opposite direction). In the ongoing task, participants must respond to the position the arrow is located at by pressing the corresponding arrow key. As for the PM task, participants will be instructed to react to any arrow pointing downward for half of the experiment and any arrow appearing at the lower position for the other half of the experiment by pressing the spacebar. In line with the procedure used by previous studies, every trial will be preceded by task-irrelevant picture stimuli that will either be of neutral or emotional content, whereby emotional distractors will consist of high arousing picture stimuli (e.g., Straub et al., 2020). As the existing literature provides mixed results regarding the dissociable effects of positive and negative stimuli on cognitive control and attention, we will present emotional distractors of both positive and negative valence. Picture stimuli will be taken from the Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS; Marchewka et al., 2014).

Maintaining an intention to perform a specific action in the future, known as prospective remembering, under certain conditions is associated with performance costs in ongoing activities that are performed while maintaining the intention. While such costs in prospective memory (PM) tasks have been documented extensively (Cottini & Meier, 2020) it is currently debated, whether they represent effects of a resource-demanding monitoring for PM cues or a strategic delay of ongoing-task responses (e.g., Heathcote et al., 2015; Strickland et al., 2017). Anderson et al. (2018) assessed effects of different performance-strategy instructions on ongoing-task costs and associated parameter configurations in an accumulator model of ongoing-task performance in order to more closely map changes associated with PM monitoring and a strategic delay of ongoing-task responses. There key findings were that strategic delay instructions produced distinct and different behavioural effects and model parameter configurations than monitoring instructions, and that processes elicited by standard PM instructions more closely resembled effects of PM cue monitoring. By contrast, in a recent study, Kurtz et al. (2022) used mouse-movement tracking in a PM task in order to assess sub-process underlying ongoing-task costs during active PM tasks and aftereffects of completed intentions. Here the authors found evidence for a strategic delay of ongoing-task responses in terms of a mouse movement that was more in the middle between response options for the ongoing task and the PM task during the first half of the mouse movement. However, since this was also accompanied by response slowing during the first half, it is unclear to what extent PM monitoring may have contributed to ongoing task costs. While this discrepancy between findings may in parts be due to differences in task design and the characteristics of the measures that were employed in each study, it is unclear how specific monitoring or delay strategy instructions would affect response dynamics during PM tasks. Therefore, in the present study, we will combine these approaches and conduct a conceptual replication of the Anderson et al. (2018) study with a mouse-movement tracking paradigm that is based on the Kurtz et al. (2022) study. Specifically, we will assess response dynamics of ongoing-task and PM performance in a mouse-tracking paradigm when giving participants task either a standard PM instruction or instructions that are designed to foster either or a monitoring-based or a delay-based performance strategy. With this, we aim to a) characterize response dynamics of different strategies to perform an ongoing task during a PM task and b) assess whether response dynamics during standard PM instructions differ substantially from delay strategies or PM monitoring strategies. Additionally, we will investigate effects of such performance strategies on the processing of irrelevant distractor stimuli during a PM task and assess effects on aftereffects of responding to prospective memory cues (Meier & Cottini, 2022).

This study seeks to replicate Experiment 2 from a study by Dreisbach and Fischer (2011). This study tested the a-priori hypothesis that aversive signals, characterized by low perceptual fluency of stimuli that do not trigger response conflict, may lead to mobilization of cognitive effort as opposed to strategy switches in terms of effort avoidance.

The present prospective cohort study investigated how executive functions (i.e., response inhibition, updating, and set shifting) proceed over time, influence each other, and are affected by chronic stress exposure. From 2016 to 2019, 516 German participants were asked twice a year to complete an online assessment including a Go/NoGo, spatial 2-Back and Number-Letter task. Accuracy-adjusted response times in task-specific target trials or their contrasts to non-target trials were used as executive performance measures. Self-reports on the perceived stress scale (PSS) and hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) served as measures of chronic stress. All executive performance and stress measures showed considerable intraindividual stability over time: Those participants responding faster in one task tended to do so months to three years later or, those who currently showed higher levels of chronic stress tended to do so months to three years later. Interestingly, current inhibition or updating performance predicted later shifting performance and, current inhibition or shifting performance predicted later HCC. However, current levels of perceived stress were not predictive of later HCC (and vice versa). None of the chosen chronic stress measure was significantly associated with later executive performance. These findings suggest that although executive processes might modulate the body’s physiological response to chronic stress exposure, they appear to be relatively robust against disturbances of chronic stress exposure.

Reproducibility is a defining feature of science, but the extent to which it characterizes current research is unknown. We conducted replications of 100 experimental and correlational studies published in three psychology journals using high-powered designs and original materials when available.

From the simple act of picking up a glass of water while talking to someone at a party, to remembering to swing by the bike shop to pick up an inner tube while riding through traffic on our way home from the office, intentions guide and alter our behavior—often while we are busily engaged in other ongoing tasks. Particularly, performing delayed intentions, like stopping at the bike shop on our way home, relies on a set of cognitive processes summarized as prospective memory (PM) that enable us to postpone intended actions until a later point in time (time-based PM) or until specific reminders or PM cues signal the appropriate opportunity to retrieve and perform an intended action (event-based PM). Interestingly, over the past decades a growing number of studies showed that successfully completing an event-based intention does not necessarily lead to its immediate deactivation. Instead, no-longer-relevant PM cues can incur so-called aftereffects that impair task performance and sometimes even trigger erroneous repetitions of the intended action (i.e., commission errors). Although in our everyday lifes we frequently rely on both PM and intention deactivation, still relatively little is known about how our cognitive system actually manages to deactivate completed intentions, under which conditions this may fail, and how well PM and intention deactivation function under extreme conditions, like acute stress. In order to answer these questions, I first conducted a comprehensive review of the published literature on aftereffects of completed intentions. Here, I found that although intentions can incur aftereffects in terms of commission errors and performance costs that most likely result from continued intention retrieval, they generally seem to be deactivated or even inhibited at some point. Most importantly, this deactivation process does not operate like a light switch but dynamically moves along a continuum from complete reactivation to complete deactivation of intentions, and is substantially modulated by factors that also affect retrieval of intentions prior to their completion. Specifically, intention deactivation is most likely to fail when we remain within the same context in which we originally completed the intention and encounter no-longer-relevant PM cues that are extremely salient and were strongly linked to the intended action. Subsequently, in Study 1 I directly tested a dual-mechanisms account of aftereffects of completed intentions. Building on findings of impaired intention deactivation in older adults who often show deficits in cognitive-control abilities, this account posits that aftereffects and commission errors in particular stem from a failure to exert cognitive control when no-longer-relevant PM cues trigger retrieval of an intention. Accordingly, intention deactivation should hinge on the availability of cognitive-control resources at the moment we encounter no-longer-relevant PM cues. In order to test this, I assessed aftereffects of completed intentions in younger and older adults while manipulating transient demands on information processing during encounters of no-longer-relevant PM cues on a trial-by-trial basis. In Experiment 1, nominally more older adults than younger adults made a commission error. Additionally, medium demands on cognitive control substantially reduced aftereffects compared to low and high demands (i.e., u-shaped relation). In Experiment 2, which extended this manipulation but only tested younger adults, however, this control-demand effect did not replicate. Instead, aftereffects occurred regardless of cognitive-control demands. The lack of a consistent control-demand effect on aftereffects across two experiments, suggested that cognitive control either only plays a minor role for the occurrence of aftereffects or that, more likely, intention deactivation hinges on other specific cognitive-control abilities, like response inhibition. In two subsequent studies, I extended this research and tested the effects of acute stress—a potent modulator of cognitive-control functioning—on PM and intention deactivation. Previous studies showed that, under moderate demands, acute stress had no effect on PM-cue detection, intention deactivation or performance costs that presumably arise from monitoring for PM cues. Importantly, however, based on these studies it remained unclear if acute stress affects PM and intention deactivation under high demands, as has been observed, for instance, with working-memory performance. To test such a potential demand-dependence of acute stress effects on PM, I first assessed the effects of psychosocial stress induction with the Trier Social Stress Test on PM and intention deactivation when detecting PM cues and intention deactivation were either low or high demanding (Study 2). Building on this work, I then tested the effects of combined physiological and psychosocial stress induction with the Maastricht Acute Stress Test on PM and the ability to track one’s own performance (i.e., output monitoring), when PM-cue detection was difficult and ongoing tasks additionally posed either low or high demands on working memory (Study 3). Despite successful stress induction (e.g., increased levels of salivary cortisol and impaired subjective mood), both studies showed that PM-cue detection and intention retrieval were not affected by acute stress under any of these conditions. Study 2 revealed a tendency for a higher risk of making commission errors under stress when no-longer-relevant PM cues were salient and difficult to ignore. Study 3 additionally showed that acute stress had no effect on output monitoring. Most importantly, however, across the different PM tasks and stress-induction protocols in these studies, acute stress substantially reduced performance costs from monitoring for PM cues, but did so only when PM-cue detection was difficult. This effect suggested that, depending on task demands, acute stress might shift retrieval processes in PM away from costly monitoring-based retrieval towards a more economic spontaneous retrieval of intended actions. In summary, the present thesis suggests that the processes underlying prospective remembering and intention deactivation are tightly woven together and are only selectively affected by cognitive-control availability and effects of acute stress. With this, it contributed substantially to our understanding of these essential cognitive capacities and their reliability. My research showed that PM is remarkably resilient against effects of acute stress experiences when remembering intended actions is supported by external reminders. Acute stress may actually make monitoring for such reminders more efficient when they are hard to detect. Additionally, it showed that, in most circumstances, we seem to be able to successfully and quickly deactivate intentions once they are completed. It is only under some conditions that intention deactivation may be slow, sporadic or fail, which can lead to continued retrieval of completed intentions. While this seems not to be affected by transient demands on information processing during encounters of no-longer-relevant PM cues, intention deactivation might become difficult for older adults and stressed individuals when no-longer-relevant reminders of intentions easily trigger the associated action and are hard to ignore.