Conflict, consciousness, and control

To what degree is executive conflict resolution dependent on conflict awareness? A recent study by Dehaene et al. compared neural responses to conflict elicited through either visible or subliminal primes. Despite behavioral conflict effects for both prime types, neural activity in a control network including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was present only for visible primes. Along with other recent results, these findings have important implications for theories on the relationship between ACC, consciousness, and cognitive control.     

Desire for control, locus of control, and proneness to depression

Two personality constructs, desire for control and locus of control, were related to depression among college students. Measures of levels of depression, desire for control, and locus of control were taken from subjects. Approximately six months later 71% of these subjects returned a questionnaire concerning their experiences with depression during that six-month period. It was found that locus of control scores, particularly the extent to which subjects perceived that their lives were controlled by chance, were significantly related to the depression levels. It was also found that high desire for control subjects who held external perceptions of control were most likely to seek nonprofessional help for depression. In addition, high desire for control subjects who perceived their lives as generally controlled by chance were most likely to have suicidal thoughts. The results are interpreted in terms of a general style that may promote a proneness to depression for certain individuals.     

Temperament, anxiety, and attentional control

To regulate attention has been a significant component of individual differences in temperament, and other research supported a relation between measures of attentional control and anxiety, i.e., high scores on trait anxiety were correlated with inability to regulate attention in response to the environment, so enhanced attentional control may interact with dimensions of temperament to modify the effects of generalized anxiety. To test this hypothesis, 69 undergraduates completed the Revised Dimensions of Temperament Survey, the Burns Anxiety Scale, and the Derryberry and Reed measure of Attentional Control. Analysis suggested attentional control may be a significant factor in modifying reported anxiety. Further research is warranted, given the present small sample tested with numerous measures.     

Keeping the illusion of control under control: Ceilings, floors, and imperfect calibration

Prior research has claimed that people exaggerate probabilities of success by overestimating personal control in situations that are heavily or completely chance-determined. We examine whether such overestimation of control persists in situations where people do have control. Our results suggest a simple model that accounts for prior findings on illusory control as well as for situations where actual control is high: People make imperfect estimates of their level of control. By focusing on situations marked by low control, prior research has created the illusion that people generally overestimate their level of control. Across three studies, we show that when they have a great deal of control, people under-estimate it. Implications for research on perceived control and co-variation assessment are discussed.     

Equivalence relations, contextual control, and naming

This paper reports two experiments that investigated the role of verbal behavior in the emergence and generalization of contextually controlled equivalence classes. During both experiments, participants were trained with two different combinations of the same easily nameable, yet formally unrelated, pictorial stimuli. Match-to-sample baselines for eight four-member classes were established under the contextual control of two colors. In the presence of one color, conditional relations were established between stimuli whose normative names rhymed. In the presence of the other color, conditional relations were established between stimuli whose normative names did not rhyme. Although, during Experiment 1, all participants demonstrated equivalence classes involving rhyming stimuli, none demonstrated the formation of nonrhyme equivalence classes. To investigate this finding, Experiment 2 evaluated whether participants would demonstrate both rhyme and nonrhyme equivalence classes given more extensive exposure to the experimental contingencies. All participants demonstrated contextually controlled rhyme and nonrhyme equivalence classes, although rhyme classes were demonstrated with greater facility than nonrhyme classes. Results indicate that visual stimuli are named, that verbal bases for stimulus classification can affect the emergence of contextually controlled equivalence classes, and that untrained contextually controlled conditional discriminations involving novel stimuli can emerge on the basis of participants' verbal behavior.     

Self-evaluation,self-reinforcement,and locus of control

Two verbal recognition memory tests were administered to 24 internals and 24 externals. Subjects were required to self-evaluate (SE) their responses on the first test and both SE and self-reinforce (SR) on the second. There were no internal-external differences in performance accuracy on either task, but internals gave themselves consistently higher self-evaluations, administered more positive SR and less negative SR. There were no differences in the criteria used by the two groups for SR. SR differences appeared to be a function of the differential SE. It was suggested that external locus of control could be viewed as a self-regulation deficit. Externals are hypothesized to be unable to evaluate their own behavior adequately in the absence of external input and therefore do not make effective use of self-reinforcement. Discussion also made reference to the process of self-regulation.     

Desired control,felt control,and dental pain: Recent findings and remaining issues

This paper reviews a series of studies examining how desire for control among dental patients affects their reaction to dental treatment. This research (across eight samples) indicates that low perceived control is associated with heightened stressful responding before and during dental treatment only among patients reporting high desire for control Thus, the impact of low perceived control appears to be moderated by desire for control. An additional finding is that manipulations of control (e.g., providing information, stress inoculation training) primarily impact patients reporting both a high desire for control (during treatment) and low initial perceived control. These data suggest that consideration of patients' desire for control in addition to their perceived control increases our ability to predict their level of dental stress. Additionally, these data provide initial support for the view that the discrepancy between high desire for control and low perceived control play a causal role in patient's perceptions of dental pain and fear.This research was supported by grant USPHS-NIH 5 RO1 DEO 9419-02 (H. L. and R. B. coprincipal investigators) and by BRSG/College of Dentistry seed money.     

Agreeableness,conscientiousness, and effortful control processes

Effortful control (EC) is believed to be a superordinate, temperament system that is associated with early-appearing individual differences in self-regulation. It has been suggested that EC indexes the common developmental process underlying Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Theory suggests this association, but little empirical evidence has linked personality to actual self-regulatory behaviors. This study examined personality and cognitive assessments associated with impairments in self-regulation. College students (N=113) gave self-reports on the five dimensions of personality. They also completed the Stroop test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), and a verbal fluency test. Agreeableness predicted Stroop reaction times. Both Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predicted WCST measures. Conscientiousness predicted verbal fluency for men. Results were discussed in terms of EC being a common developmental substrate of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness.     

Love,care, control and punishment*

Love, care, control and punishment—each has its particular, though not exclusive, institution. Institutions are projections of our needs or the needs of the past. The family is the institution of love. Education, health and social services are the institutions of care. The police and the army are the institutions of control. The courts and the prisons the institutions of punishment.     

Gender,residual deviance,and social control

Focusing on gendered aspects of informal social control, we use a societal reaction approach to examine 15 years of students’ gender norm violation projects. Three predictions regarding differential reaction to women's and men's residual deviance are (a) that there will be no gender differences, (b) that those with less power and status (women) will be sanctioned more or (c) that those with more status resources (men) will be monitored and reacted to more. We discuss methodological advantages of using norm violations to study informal social control. Findings contribute to a more complete theory of how societal reactions to residual deviance are mediated by gender. There were large gender differences in what students chose to do regarding norm violations and little change over time. Male “deviants” were censured more in terms of negativity, strength of reaction, laughter, and homophobia; female “deviants” were censured more as targets of verbal and sexual remarks. We discuss the need for more attention to gender‐specific types of reaction and the role of homophobia in informal social control of men.     

Novelty, stimulus control, and operant variability

Although behavior analysis has been criticized for failure to account for response novelty, many common behavior-analytic concepts and processes (e.g., selectionism, the operant, reinforcement, and stimulus control) assume variability both in the environment and in behavior. The importance of the relation between variability and novelty, particularly for verbal behavior, is discussed, and concepts used to account for novel behavior are examined. Experimental findings also are reviewed that suggest that variability in behavior can come under discriminative control, and these findings are applied to describe novel instances of behavior that may arise during problem solving. We conclude that variations provided and selected by the terms of the three-term contingency are powerful means for understanding novel behavior.     

Context, not conflict, drives cognitive control

Theories of cognitive control generally assume that perceived conflict acts as a signal to engage inhibitory mechanisms that suppress subsequent conflicting information. Crucially, an absence of conflict is not regarded as being a relevant signal for cognitive control. Using a cueing, a priming, and a Simon task, we provide evidence that conflict does not have this unique signal status: Encountering a conflict does not lead to behavioral adjustments on subsequent conflict trials, whereas encountering a nonconflict trial does lead to behavioral adjustments on subsequent nonconflict trials. We propose that this apparent role-reversal can be explained by a mechanism that responds to both the presence and the absence of conflict, down-regulating the visuomotor system following conflict, and up-regulating it following nonconflict.     

Schizotypy facets, cognitive control, and emotion

This research examined whether facets of schizotypy were differentially related to cognitive control and emotion-processing traits. In a confirmatory factor analysis (N = 261), a 3-factor model of schizotypy exhibited good fit and fit significantly better than a 2-factor model. In addition, only disorganized schizotypy was associated with poor cognitive control (specifically, prepotent inhibition). Moreover, disorganized but not positive schizotypy was associated with increased emotional confusion and increased emotionality. In contrast, negative schizotypy was associated with increased emotional confusion but decreased emotionality. These results suggest that disorganized schizotypy is related to dysregulation of both cognition and emotion and that negative schizotypy might reflect deficits in the experience and processing of emotion and not just in emotional expression.     

Attention control, memory updating, and emotion regulation temporarily reduce the capacity for executive control

This research tested the hypothesis that initial efforts at executive control temporarily undermine subsequent efforts at executive control. Four experiments revealed that controlling the focus of visual attention (Experiment 1), inhibiting predominant writing tendencies (Experiment 2), taking a working memory test (Experiment 3), or exaggerating emotional expressions (Experiment 4) undermined performance on subsequent tests of working memory span, reverse digit span, and response inhibition, respectively. The results supported a limited resource model of executive control and cast doubt on competing accounts based on mood, motivation, or task difficulty. Prior efforts at executive control are a significant contextual determinant of the operation of executive processes.