Event structure and cognitive control

Recently, a great deal of research has demonstrated that although everyday experience is continuous in nature, it is parsed into separate events. The aim of the present study was to examine whether event structure can influence the effectiveness of cognitive control. Across 5 experiments we varied the structure of events within the AX-CPT by shifting the spatial location of cues and probes on a computer screen. When location shifts were present, a pattern of AX-CPT performance consistent with enhanced cognitive control was found. To test whether the location shift effects were caused by the presence of event boundaries per se, other aspects of the AX-CPT were manipulated, such as the color of cues and probes and the inclusion of a distractor task during the cue-probe delay. Changes in cognitive control were not found under these conditions, suggesting that the location shift effects were specifically related to the formation of separate event models. Together, these results can be accounted for by the Event Horizon Model and a representation-based theory of cognitive control, and suggest that cognitive control can be influenced by the surrounding environmental structure.