Exploring short- and long-term dynamics of context-specific adjustments of cognitive control

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan Scherbaum
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 413245832

One of the hallmarks of goal-directed behavior is the use of contextual information to flexibly adjust cognitive control and attention to an ever-changing environment. Research on such context adjustments has forwarded our understanding in recent years, focusing mainly on the so-called context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) effects. However this understanding of context adjustments is currently challenged from two directions: First, it has been questioned, whether the research findings on context adjustments are related to cognitive control at all, and second, whether these context adjustments which reflect a flexible mechanism in the short-term can lead to inflexibility in the long-term. In our project, we aim to resolve these issues by specifying the processes and mechanisms underlying context adjustments. In a first line of research we intend to clarify the role of both, a cognitive control-based account and the challenging stimulus-response-prediction-based account in the acquisition and engagement of contextual adjustments. In a second line, we intend to study the long-term consequences of context adjustments and investigate how such adjustments interact with additional contextual requirements.For these objectives, we follow an approach based on two time scales to trace, first, the short-term conditions that lead to contextual adjustments by applying time-continuous measurements such as mouse tracking and EEG frequency tagging. Second, we aim at tracing long-term costs and potentials of contextual adjustments by applying an across-session and multi-contextual approach. This way, we burst open the simplified either/or as well as the solely positive short-term view on contextual adjustments and derive a detailed theoretical picture of the processes and mechanisms underlying the flexible contextual adjustment of behavior.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants