Previous studies on value-driven attentional capture (VDAC) have demonstrated that the uncertainty of reward value modulates attentional allocation via associative learning. However, it is unclear whether such attentional exploration is executed based on the amount of potential reward information available for refining value prediction or the…

Studies of switching between tasks and studies of error commission have both provided solid behavioral measures of executive control. Nonetheless, a gap remains between these strands of research. In three experiments we sought to reduce this gap by assessing the impact of task errors on N-2 repetition costs, an effect supposedly related to…

Two experiments critically examined a predictive-coding based account of the vulnerability of short-term memory (STM) to auditory distraction, particularly the disruptive effect of changing-state sound on verbal serial recall. Experiment 1 showed that providing participants with the opportunity to predict the contents of an imminent spoken…

Frequent forced switching between tasks has been shown to reduce switch costs and increase voluntary switch rates. So far, however, the boundary conditions of the influence of forced task switching on voluntary task switching are unknown. Thus, the present study was aimed to test different aspects of generalizability (across items, tasks, and…

As deviations from what is expected, anomalies are typically seen as an obstruction to making good predictions or an impulse to revise the predictive framework. Here, we consider a different possibility--that anomalies, particularly those related to cognitive processing, may be a valuable source of diagnostic information. More specifically, we…

It has been demonstrated that the Simon effect may be increased or reversed due to proportion congruency manipulation, suggesting that learned spatial irrelevant stimulus-response (S-R) associations are used to guide responses. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that learning spatial irrelevant S-R associations by rewards may show a similar…

Higher working memory capacity (WMC) improves performance on a range of cognitive and academic tasks. However, a greater ability to control attention sometimes leads individuals with higher WMC to persist in using complex, attention-demanding approaches that are suboptimal for a given task. We examined whether higher WMC would hinder insight…

Trial-to-trial fluctuations in attentional state while performing measures of intelligence were examined in the current study. Participants performed various measures of fluid and crystallized intelligence while also providing attentional state ratings prior to each trial. It was found that pre-trial attentional state ratings strongly predicted…

Mind wandering--mentation unrelated to one's current activity and surroundings--is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but seemingly competing ideas have been proposed regarding its relation to executive cognitive processes. The control-failure hypothesis postulates that executive processes prevent mind wandering, whereas the global availability hypothesis…

Proportion congruency effects represent hallmark phenomena in current theorizing about cognitive control. This is based on the notion that proportion congruency determines the relative levels of attention to relevant and irrelevant information in conflict tasks. However, little empirical evidence exists that uniquely supports such an attention…

Immediate serial recall is seriously disrupted by to-be-ignored sound. According to the embedded-processes model, auditory distractors elicit attentional orienting that draws processing resources away from the recall task. The model predicts that interference should be attenuated after repeated exposure to the auditory distractors. Previous…

On the basis of the executive-attention theory of working memory capacity (WMC; e.g., M. J. Kane, A. R. A. Conway, D. Z. Hambrick, & R. W. Engle, 2007), the authors tested the relations among WMC, mind wandering, and goal neglect in a sustained attention to response task (SART; a go/no-go task). In 3 SART versions, making conceptual versus…