In many cases, effect-based control ensures successful goal pursuit. But what happens when our actions fail to produce the intended outcomes? Oftentimes, we need additional effort to overcome obstacles that hinder goal attainment. How do we adjust our actions in response to such distractions?

Distractions not only impair performance, but might also have a signalling function indicating the need for additional control. This hypothesis has received support from studies showing that errors and conflict (i.e., situations in which correct and erroneous responses compete) are automatically registered by dedicated monitoring mechanisms. In addition, it has been proposed that monitored errors or conflicts serve as a learning signal for subsequent control adjustments. This allows a more efficient rejection of distractors and strengthens the selection of goal-relevant information.

Consider a situation in which you are driving a car through a construction site. Registration of small dips in performance should ´teach´ control mechanisms of the driver that increase attentional focus, helping to stay in lane and adjust the speed accordingly. From this perspective, control operates likes a cybernetic feedback loop, in which errors and conflicts dynamically update control settings. But what happens, if we drive through the same construction site every day? Wouldn´t it be more efficient, if the appropriate level of control could be directly reactivated? To address this question, we investigate how abstract control states, i.e., snap shots of current attentional states, are stored in memory and retrieved later on. Our previous findings have suggested that that memory aids control operations by automatizing and tailoring them to situational circumstances.
Although there is agreement that errors and conflicts are quickly monitored, it is less clear which features of the monitored events cause subsequent control adjustments. It has been proposed that emotional responses to errors and conflict could be the driving force of control adjustments. We investigate this hypothesis and ask whether errors and conflict elicit emotional responses and how emotions guide control. In previous studies, we found that conflict and errors elicit negative affect and engage motivational systems that facilitate avoidance. Preliminary evidence points towards a direct link between the strength of emotional/motivational engagement and the strength of control adjustment.

Because of their signalling effect, errors and conflict help us shield against distractors. While a narrow attentional focus is appropriate in many difficult situations, there are cases in which more flexible behaviour is needed. For instance, the ability to block off additional input is beneficial while driving through a construction site, but clearly detrimental when expecting a phone call at work. In such situations, flexible switching back and forth between different tasks is required. We investigate these situations in our research on multitasking. Initial results suggest that errors and conflict can facilitate disengagement from the current task, thereby making people more flexible to switch to the alternative task. In our view, these findings emphasise the context-dependency of cognitive control. On the one hand, errors and conflicts signal the need for more stability (shielding against distraction) in single-tasking. Here, control mechanisms can optimise how a task is performed. On the other hand, errors and conflicts signal the need for more flexibility (switching between tasks) in multitasking where control mechanisms can optimise which task is selected.

Selected publications:

• Dignath, D., Kiesel, A., & Eder, A.B. (2015). Flexible Conflict Management: Conflict Avoidance and Conflict Adjustment in Reactive Cognitive Control. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 41(4), 975-988.
   
• Wirth, R.*, Dignath, D.*, Pfister, R., Kunde, W., & Eder, A. B. (2016). Attracted by rewards: Disentangling the motivational influence of rewarding and punishing targets and distractors. Motivation Science, 2(3), 143-156.(* = shared first authorship)
   
• Dignath, D., Johannsen, L., Hommel, B., & Kiesel, A. (2019) Contextual control of conflict: Reconciling cognitive-control and episodic retrieval accounts of sequential conflict modulation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,45(9), 1265-1270.
   
• Dignath, D., Berger, A., Spruit, I., M., & van Steenbergen, H. (2019) Temporal dynamics of error-related corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major activity: Evidence for implicit emotion regulation following errors. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 146, 208–216.
   
• Dignath, D., Eder, A., Steinhauser, M., & Kiesel, A. (2020). Conflict monitoring and the affective signaling hypothesis -an integrative review. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 27,193–216.
   
• Dignath, D., Wirth, R., Kühnhausen, J., Gawrilow, C., Kunde, W., & Kiesel, A. (2020). Motivation drives conflict adaptation. Motivation Science, 6(1), 84–89.
   
• Schuch, S. *, & Dignath, D.,* (in press). Task-Conflict biases Decision Making. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. (* = shared first authorship)