Affective influences on cognitive control

Abstract: Affective influences on cognitive control have been discussed, and evidence for both affective facilitation and affective impairment effects has been observed. We ran this project to gain new insights into how to harmonize these inconsistent observations. In Chapter 1, I describe the neural mechanisms of cognitive control based on influential theories. I then briefly describe response conflict tasks, the congruence effect (CE) in response conflict tasks that is commonly used to measure cognitive control, and two cognitive control effects that signal adjustment to cognitive control, the context-specific proportion congruent (CSPC) effect and the congruence sequence effect (CSE). In Chapter 2, I summarize hypotheses regarding affective effects on the implementation of cognitive control and regarding affective effects on the adjustment to cognitive control. After this review, specific questions that motivated specific studies in this project are summarized in Chapter 3. According to theories about affective effects on the implementation of cognitive control, affective effects depend on many theoretically important factors. In order to obtain an average size of the affective effects and to investigate factors that influence them, we carried out a meta-analysis of the affective effects on the CE in response conflict tasks (Chapter 4). Two contradicting hypotheses have been proposed as to how negative emotions versus positive emotions affect control adjustments. To further support one of the two hypotheses, we conducted an experiment to test the affective effects on the CSPC effect (Chapter 5) and two experiments to test the affective effects on the CSE (Chapters 6 and 7). The present project demonstrates that affective effects on cognitive control are conditional. Specifically, affective effects on the implementation of cognitive control are conditional on valence, arousal, task relevance, SOA, and affect duration. Affective effects on the adjustment to cognitive control are conditional on valence, and this valence effect is further mediated by motivational orientation (avoidance vs. approach). Further discussions of the results can be found in Chapter 8

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Universität Freiburg, Dissertation, 2020

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Psychologie

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Freiburg
• (who): Universität
• (when): 2020
• Creator: Zhang, Jinhui
• Contributor: Kiesel, Andrea ; Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Wirtschafts- und Verhaltenswissenschaftliche Fakultät

Further information

• DOI: 10.6094/UNIFR/165655
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:25-freidok-1656556
• Rights: Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 14.08.2025, 10:57 AM CEST