The Influence Of Positive Affect And Reward On The Trade-off Between Unconscious Cognitive Stability And Flexibility

Cognitive control is an ability for individual to adapt to the environment and adjust their behaviors,cognitive bias and decision making for the purpose of the current goals or task orientations.As internal mechanism of individual behaviors and cognitive processing,cognitive control process requires individual both focus on the goal in face of the interference stimuli and adjust their behaviors and cognitive style to the environment at the same time.The research on the trade-off between cognitive stability and flexibility is a hotspot in the field of psychology in recent years.At present,there are many studies to explore the effect of positive affect and reward on the balance of cognitive stability and flexibility and the neural mechanisms,they reached a relatively consistent view,namely positive emotion can promote cognitive flexibility,while reward incentives can promote cognitive stability.It is also argued that dopamine system,locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system,amygdala and other brain areas or neurotransmitters play key role in the cognitive processing.However,there is a small part of the researches come to an opposite conclusion.This phenomenon may be caused by a variety of factors such as the way the stimulus presented or how the task set is.According to the existing researches,we have observed that positive emotion and reward have both similar effects and dissociable influences in the process of cognitive control,their actual effects are influenced by many factors such as experimental paradigm,task relevance,and the awareness processing of individual.In order to expand the research scope of cognitive control and further explore its relationship with positive affect and reward incentives,we conduct three experiments by using the unconscious version of task-switching paradigm and choosing Goschke effect as the dependent variable index to compare the the similarities and differences of positive affect performance-contingency and reward motivation on the balance of cognitive stability and flexibility in conscious and unconscious conditions.We therefore developed a within-subject experimental design.The stimulus was induced unconsciously,and the subjects were asked to respond to the target stimulus while switching between the two simple tasks.Then conduct a forced experiment to ensure the effectiveness of the masking operation,and finally analyze the reaction time,error rate and Goschke value of different experimental conditions to draw conclusions.We come to the conclusions: 1,the pre-experiment shows a significant Goschke effect,indicating the existence of unconscious Goschke effect.It suggests that our experimental operation is feasible;2,in the nonperformance-contingent condition,positive affect can promote the individual's cognitive flexibility,whereas in the performance-contingent condition,positive stimuli enhanced cognitive stability;3,the reward can promote the individual's cognitive stability.The results above show that,in the unconscious state,positive emotion and reward incentives affect the process of cognitive control.Specifically,positive emotion will promote cognitive flexibility,reward motivation promote cognitive stability,but when join the positive affect and the reward stimuli together will make the cognitive processing lean to stability.To sum,the role of the positive affect and reward motivation in cognitive control is not stable,they can both enhance and impede the performance of individual behavior.Our research provides a new way of extending the scope of cognitive control into the field of unconsciousness,further deepening the understanding of the relationship between positive emotion,reward motivation and cognitive control,as well as emphasizing the importance of in-depth study of cognitive control's influential factors.Future research also requires the use of f MRI,ERP and f NIRS techniques to further explore the relationship between them and the underlying neural mechanisms.