In the Mood for Adaptation

Abstract

Cognitive conflict plays an important role in tuning cognitive control to the situation at hand. On the basis of earlier findings demonstrating emotional modulations of conflict processing, we predicted that affective states may adaptively regulate goal-directed behavior that is driven by conflict. We tested this hypothesis by measuring conflict-driven control adaptations following experimental induction of four different mood states that could be differentiated along the dimensions of arousal and pleasure. After mood states were induced, 91 subjects performed a flanker task, which provided a measure of conflict adaptation. As predicted, pleasure level affected conflict adaptation: Less pleasure was associated with more conflict-driven control. Arousal level did not influence conflict adaptation. This study suggests that affect adaptively regulates cognitive control. Implications for future research and psychopathology are discussed.

Effects of positive mood on probabilistic learning: Behavioral and electrophysiological correlates

“…However, earlier studies found that valence, but not arousal, did contribute to adaptive goal-directed behavior in front of conflicting situations or events (van Steenbergen, Band, & Hommel, 2010). On the other hand, arousal per se appears unlikely to account for the complex interaction effects on the FRN and ERN components in our study.…”

The influence of negative stimulus features on conflict adaption: evidence from fluency of processing

“…Thus, neither RT data in Experiment 1 nor error rates in Experiment 2 were further modulated by disfluency. Indeed, there have been many studies reporting similar findings, i.e., conflict adaptation effects being only present in RT data OR error data (see, e.g., Ullsperger et al, 2005; Bugg, 2008; van Steenbergen et al, 2010, 2012; Puccioni and Vallesi, 2012; Soutschek et al, 2012). So far, there has been no study that directly addressed why the conflict adaptation effect is sometimes found in the RT data while it is found in the error data in other cases.…”

“…Only recently, the question of how stress, affect and motivation might influence processing adjustments has moved into the focus of research (e.g., van Steenbergen et al, 2009, 2010, 2012; Kuhbandner and Zehetleitner, 2011; Padmala et al, 2011; Plessow et al, 2011; Stürmer et al, 2011; Braem et al, 2012; see Dreisbach and Fischer, 2012a, for a review). The role of affect in sequential conflict adaptation is of specific interest here due to the increasing evidence that conflicts themselves are experienced as aversive signals (Dreisbach and Fischer, 2012b; Schouppe et al, 2012, 2015; Fritz and Dreisbach, 2013, 2014).…”

Counteracting effect of threat on reward enhancements during working memory

“…Similarly, in studies that investigated how rewards affect cognition, individual differences in self-reported reward sensitivity were related to the effect of reward on cognitive performance (e.g., van Steenbergen et al, 2010). But it is currently unknown how these self-reported measures relate to the behavior during tasks that involve simultaneous reward and threat manipulations.…”