Centre for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences (CRCN), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
Neurosciences Institute (UNI), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
Cogn Emot. 2021 Sep;35(6):1195-1202. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2021.1932427. Epub 2021 May 27.
In many situations, engaging cognitive control is required to override automatic responses and to behave in an adaptive manner. However, cognitive control is also effortful and costly which makes it aversive. A fundamental question is how individuals decide to engage or not in cognitive control based on the costs of this effort and the motivation to achieve the goals. In the present study, we explored the hypothesis that affective states can influence this decision by changing participants' subjective experiences during the task. Participants performed a conflict task (arrow priming) and judged their feeling of difficulty after each trial. Affective states were induced by presenting emotional faces (happy, fearful or neutral) at the beginning of each trial. We found that participants subjectively judged happy trials as easier even though they objectively made more errors in this condition. Follow-up analyses revealed that participants engaged less cognitive control with happy than with neutral or fearful faces. We conclude that affective states influence the recruitment of cognitive control and associated metacognitive experiences.
在许多情况下，需要进行认知控制才能克服自动反应，并以适应的方式行事。然而，认知控制也需要付出努力和成本，这使其变得不受欢迎。一个基本的问题是，个体如何根据这种努力的成本和实现目标的动机来决定是否参与认知控制。在本研究中，我们假设情绪状态可以通过改变参与者在任务期间的主观体验来影响这个决定。参与者执行了一项冲突任务（箭头启动），并在每次试验后判断自己的难度感。通过在每次试验开始时呈现快乐、恐惧或中性的情绪面孔来诱发情绪状态。我们发现，参与者主观上认为快乐试验更容易，即使他们在这种情况下客观上犯了更多的错误。后续分析表明，参与者在快乐面孔条件下的认知控制投入较少，而在中性或恐惧面孔条件下则较多。我们的结论是，情绪状态影响认知控制的招募和相关的元认知体验。
