Held Leslie K, Vermeylen Luc, Dignath David, Notebaert Wim, Krebs Ruth M, Braem Senne
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium.
Department of Psychology, Tübingen University, Schleichstraße 4, 72076, Tübingen, Germany.
Commun Psychol. 2024 Jan 12;2(1):8. doi: 10.1038/s44271-024-00055-y.
Humans can up- or downregulate the degree to which they rely on task information for goal-directed behaviour, a process often referred to as cognitive control. Adjustments in cognitive control are traditionally studied in response to experienced or expected task-rule conflict. However, recent theories suggest that people can also learn to adapt control settings through reinforcement. Across three preregistered task switching experiments (n = 415), we selectively rewarded correct performance on trials with either more (incongruent) or less (congruent) task-rule conflict. Results confirmed the hypothesis that people rewarded more on incongruent trials showed smaller task-rule congruency effects, thus optimally adapting their control settings to the reward scheme. Using drift diffusion modelling, we further show that this reinforcement of cognitive control may occur through conflict-dependent within-trial adjustments of response thresholds after conflict detection. Together, our findings suggest that, while people remain more efficient at learning stimulus-response associations through reinforcement, they can similarly learn cognitive control strategies through reinforcement.
人类可以上调或下调其在目标导向行为中依赖任务信息的程度，这一过程通常被称为认知控制。传统上，认知控制的调整是针对经历过的或预期的任务规则冲突进行研究的。然而，最近的理论表明，人们也可以通过强化来学习调整控制设置。在三项预先注册的任务切换实验（n = 415）中，我们在任务规则冲突较多（不一致）或较少（一致）的试验中，选择性地奖励正确表现。结果证实了这一假设，即在不一致试验中获得更多奖励的人表现出较小的任务规则一致性效应，从而使他们的控制设置最佳地适应奖励方案。使用漂移扩散模型，我们进一步表明，这种认知控制的强化可能是通过在冲突检测后根据冲突进行的试验内反应阈值调整来实现的。总之，我们的研究结果表明，虽然人们通过强化在学习刺激-反应关联方面仍然更有效率，但他们同样可以通过强化来学习认知控制策略。
