Andrea Kiesel

Affective flexibility relates to one’s ability to adapt thoughts and actions when facing emotional information (Malooly et al., 2013; Mărcuș et al., 2024). Impairments in affective flexibility, oft...

Goal-directed behaviour requires both efficient task execution as well as adequate task choice. Task choice may reflect deliberate evaluation of costs and benefits, but it may also be biased by bottom-up memory retrieval. Specifically, re-encountering a previously experienced context could retrieve a prior task choice, thereby influencing subsequent decisions. In the present study, using the voluntary task-switching (VTS) paradigm, we examined whether repeating a context would retrieve a task by manipulating whether a task-irrelevant context stimulus repeated or changed across consecutive trials. Based on a feature binding and episodic retrieval framework, we hypothesized that the context—albeit task irrelevant—could become bound with the task in each trial. Consequently, repeating the context would retrieve or reactivate the previous-trial task. Therefore, we predicted that context repetitions would increase task-repetition rates and task-repetition benefits. We used an adaptive VTS procedure (Mittelstädt, Miller, & Kiesel, 2018), wherein the onset of the stimulus affording a task repetition is delayed compared to the stimulus affording a task switch. The delay between the stimuli increases for every consecutive task repetition. We included a task-irrelevant context (a coloured box in Experiments 1 and 2, or a picture in Experiment 3) that could switch or repeat unpredictably in each trial. Contrary to the predictions, we found no evidence that repeating a task-irrelevant context affected either task choice or performance, even when context saliency was enhanced in Experiment 3. We discuss these findings in light of the interplay of performance optimization and task-set availability in VTS.

Background: Age-related declines in somatosensory and cognitive function impair gait and increase fall risk, particularly under dual-tasking where cognitive and motor demands compete for limited resources. Functional reserve, the difference between one’s maximum capacity and the minimum required for daily functioning, may buffer cognitive-motor interference. This study examines dual-task costs (DTCs) in healthy older adults, focusing on the roles of functional reserve, age-cohort effects, fall history and behavioural strategies such as “Stops Walking When Talking” (SWWT). Methods: A sample of 4,443 healthy older adults (mean age: 74.8 years, range: 60.05–97.43) completed the Basel Motor-Cognition Dual-Task Paradigm. Participants walked at preferred speed (single task) and performed concurrent cognitive tasks during dual-task walking, targeting semantic (animal naming) and working memory (counting backwards) during walking or as single-tasks. Functional reserve was calculated as the proportional difference between preferred and fast walking speeds. Cognitive and motor DTCs were defined as proportional performance decline from single- to dual-task conditions. Linear mixed models identified predictors of DTCs and assessed logistic-linked fall history. Cohort was residualized from age. Results: Significant cognitive-motor DTCs emerged, with both semantic and working memory tasks reflecting substantial performance declines when simultaneously walking. Working memory task induced less interference on walking whereas walking interferes more on working memory task, than semantic task, indicating domain-specific competition. Higher functional reserve predicted lower DTCs (motor, p < .001; cognitive, p = .006), suggesting its protective role. Age and cohort independently influenced DTCs, with more recent cohorts exhibiting higher cognitive-motor DTCs despite comparable ages. Fear of falling strongly predicted fall history ( p < .001). SWWT was rare (2.8%), yet associated with higher motor DTCs but not falls, suggesting compensatory strategy. Subject-specific cognitive DTC did not correlate negatively to motor DTC after accounting fix effects, thus no trade-off was detected ( r = − .024, p = .270). Conclusion: Functional reserve mitigates cognitive-motor interference in aging, while SWWT may reflect adaptive compensation. These findings identify functional reserve as potential intervention target and highlight the complexity of resource allocation, given the absence of a motor-cognitive trade-off and the presence of domain-specific effects. Future longitudinal studies should examine behaviour markers and refine cognitive-motor metrics.

Binding refers to the process of linking different pieces of information to form coherent representations. Original concepts of binding in perception were transferred to other domains assuming that bindings need to persist beyond perception to guide our thoughts and actions. Binding processes are thus fundamental to human cognition and studied in a variety of research domains. Yet, research on binding is largely fragmented across domains, lacking a coherent domain-general theoretical perspective. Here, we provide a concise, integrative review of binding theories in the domains of action control, working memory, and long-term memory, culminating in a domain-general perspective informed by Bayesian models of human cognition. We suggest that binding as studied in these domains relies on highly similar cognitive mechanisms and can be conceptualized as a Bayesian updating process serving the extraction of relations from uncertain sensory input. Thus, an increased integration and exchange between different research domains is warranted.

We examined whether the opportunity to choose modulates context-specific cognitive control by contrasting two accounts: The Intention Hypothesis proposes that choice directly enhances control by enabling more precise predictions about upcoming demands. In contrast, the Inertia Hypothesis proposes an indirect effect: choice biases the temporal structure of context sequences, facilitating learning and retrieval of context–control associations.Across four experiments, participants performed a flanker task with context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) manipulations, in which one spatial context was associated with mostly congruent trials and another with mostly incongruent trials. We varied whether participants could choose the target location. Allowing choice increased CSPC effects relative to a No-Choice condition with random context order. Critically, this effect did not depend on the act of choosing itself. Comparable CSPC effects emerged in a No-Choice: yoked order condition, in which participants experienced the same context sequences without control over their occurrences. A computational model illustrates this by showing that an inertia-based mechanism, in which control accumulates over context-repetition, is sufficient to reproduce the results, whereas an intention-based mechanism does not capture the observed pattern. Consistent with the inertia account, individual differences in repetition bias of contexts predicted the magnitude of the CSPC effects. Together, these findings suggest that the effects of choice on cognitive control arise not from choice per se, but from the temporal structure that choice imposes on experience.

When humans engage in closely coupled human-machine interactions, they often experience hand-arm vibrations, which are a byproduct of the running machine. Yet, in closely coupled human-machine interactions, it is important to ensure that human attention and cognition remains sufficiently high to avoid accidents and to achieve a good performance. The aim of the present study was to examine whether hand-arm vibrations impact on cognitive processing. In two studies, we investigated the impact of constant or random vibration compared to a baseline condition without vibration on selective attention. In detail, we assessed overall performance (RT and error rates) and the congruency effect in a flanker task (Experiment 1) and a temporal flanker task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 2, we additionally explored experienced vibration comfort and discomfort, two constructs often considered in ergonomics. In both experiments hand-arm vibrations neither affected mean response times nor proportion of correct responses. Additionally, hand-arm vibrations did not modulate the congruency effect. Experiment 2 revealed that vibration comfort and discomfort seem to correlate with task-performance. We conclude that hand-arm vibrations in general do not impact on cognitive processing, but it seems important to consider which vibration is selected to achieve optimal performance depending on user experience.

Two research traditions, action control and procedural working memory research, have addressed the question of how humans control actions, largely independently from each other. While both research traditions consider binding as an important mechanism for action control, they conceptualize this mechanism differently. Here, we argue that a comparison and synthesis of both research traditions might lead to a better understanding of the conceptualization of bindings. We first provide a brief overview of recent frameworks developed in the respective research traditions: the BRAC framework (Frings et al., 2020) and the procedural working memory (WM) model (Oberauer, 2013). We then analyze the similarities and differences between the BRAC and WM perspectives. As a first step toward fostering an integrative model of action control, we present an extension of the procedural WM model that can account for the main empirical findings investigated within the BRAC framework and that might serve as a blueprint for future integration.