Urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control

Intelligent behavior requires to act directed by goals despite competing action tendencies triggered by stimuli in the environment. For eye movements, it has recently been discovered that this ability is briefly reduced in urgent situations (Salinas et al., 2019). In a time-window before an urgent r...

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Autor principal: Christian H Poth
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/97bb9e0e70ad4dfeaad218a1ff3d719a
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:97bb9e0e70ad4dfeaad218a1ff3d719a2021-11-24T12:06:07ZUrgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control10.7554/eLife.736822050-084Xe73682https://doaj.org/article/97bb9e0e70ad4dfeaad218a1ff3d719a2021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://elifesciences.org/articles/73682https://doaj.org/toc/2050-084XIntelligent behavior requires to act directed by goals despite competing action tendencies triggered by stimuli in the environment. For eye movements, it has recently been discovered that this ability is briefly reduced in urgent situations (Salinas et al., 2019). In a time-window before an urgent response, participants could not help but look at a suddenly appearing visual stimulus, even though their goal was to look away from it. Urgency seemed to provoke a new visual–oculomotor phenomenon: A period in which saccadic eye movements are dominated by external stimuli, and uncontrollable by current goals. This period was assumed to arise from brain mechanisms controlling eye movements and spatial attention, such as those of the frontal eye field. Here, we show that the phenomenon is more general than previously thought. We found that also in well-investigated manual tasks, urgency made goal-conflicting stimulus features dominate behavioral responses. This dominance of behavior followed established trial-to-trial signatures of cognitive control mechanisms that replicate across a variety of tasks. Thus together, these findings reveal that urgency temporarily forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control in general, not only at brain mechanisms controlling eye movements.Christian H PotheLife Sciences Publications Ltdarticlecognitive controlexecutive functionattentionfrontal cortexeye movementsMedicineRScienceQBiology (General)QH301-705.5ENeLife, Vol 10 (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic cognitive control
executive function
attention
frontal cortex
eye movements
Medicine
R
Science
Q
Biology (General)
QH301-705.5
spellingShingle cognitive control
executive function
attention
frontal cortex
eye movements
Medicine
R
Science
Q
Biology (General)
QH301-705.5
Christian H Poth
Urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control
description Intelligent behavior requires to act directed by goals despite competing action tendencies triggered by stimuli in the environment. For eye movements, it has recently been discovered that this ability is briefly reduced in urgent situations (Salinas et al., 2019). In a time-window before an urgent response, participants could not help but look at a suddenly appearing visual stimulus, even though their goal was to look away from it. Urgency seemed to provoke a new visual–oculomotor phenomenon: A period in which saccadic eye movements are dominated by external stimuli, and uncontrollable by current goals. This period was assumed to arise from brain mechanisms controlling eye movements and spatial attention, such as those of the frontal eye field. Here, we show that the phenomenon is more general than previously thought. We found that also in well-investigated manual tasks, urgency made goal-conflicting stimulus features dominate behavioral responses. This dominance of behavior followed established trial-to-trial signatures of cognitive control mechanisms that replicate across a variety of tasks. Thus together, these findings reveal that urgency temporarily forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control in general, not only at brain mechanisms controlling eye movements.
format article
author Christian H Poth
author_facet Christian H Poth
author_sort Christian H Poth
title Urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control
title_short Urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control
title_full Urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control
title_fullStr Urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control
title_full_unstemmed Urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control
title_sort urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control
publisher eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/97bb9e0e70ad4dfeaad218a1ff3d719a
work_keys_str_mv AT christianhpoth urgencyforcesstimulusdrivenactionbyovercomingcognitivecontrol
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