Dynamic Conflict Management: Using performance monitoring to guide stable adjustment in task performance and flexible task selection in self-organized multitasking environments.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Andrea Kiesel, since 10/2021
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2015 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 274918212

Cognitive control describes a set of regulatory mechanisms that allow for stability and flexibility in behavior. This is perhaps most obvious in multitasking. Executing multiple tasks in rapid succession requires the stable maintenance of task goals to successfully perform individual tasks. Additionally it requires flexible switching between tasks to schedule the order of events appropriately. Control is often triggered by critical events (e.g. conflict between mutual incompatible responses) that signal the need to modify previous behavior. Recent research suggested that conflict during task performance has a two-fold function. One the one hand, it signals the need for more stability and improved task focus. On the other hand, it acts as a "Switch" cue that signals the opportunity to disengage from a currently difficult task; thereby conflict increases flexibility in task choices. Yet, it has been suggested that the signaling function of conflict critically depends on its utility within a given context. For instance, proactive control is the result of a learning process that specifies when and where to expect conflict more or less frequent. In this project we aim to investigate such proactive control for task choices and task performance during multitasking. More specifically, one goal of this project is to assess how proactive control of conflict during task performance informs the selection of tasks; furthermore, we will test how the possibility to choose tasks changes proactive control during task performance. Now, suppose that conflict has such a signaling function, the question arises how it can impact on stability and flexibility. According to theoretical models conflict is registered as a negative affective signal which then serves as a common currency to inform different control mechanisms. Another goal of this project is to test this assumption and to provide evidence that conflict in multitasking elicits negative affect, and to assess how conflict-triggered affect informs proactive control. Finally, the current project aims to investigate how the control mechanisms under investigation can be applied to motor control. Therefore, we will systematically compare control principles in cognitive and motor control and probe a possible transfer of proactive control across domains.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1772: Human performance under multiple cognitive task requirements: From basic mechanisms to optimized task scheduling
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr. David Dignath, until 10/2021