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Urgency forces stimulus-driven action by overcoming cognitive control.

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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Urgency impairs goal-directed behavior by overriding cognitive control, making external stimuli dominate actions. This effect, previously seen in eye movements, also impacts manual tasks, revealing a general mechanism of stimulus-driven action.

Keywords:
attentioncognitive controlexecutive functioneye movementsfrontal cortexhumanneuroscience

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Behavioral Science
  • Oculomotor Research

Background:

  • Intelligent behavior necessitates goal-directed actions despite environmental stimuli.
  • Urgency has been shown to briefly reduce goal-directed eye movements (Salinas et al., 2019).
  • A phenomenon of stimulus-dominated saccadic eye movements, uncontrollable by goals, was observed under urgency.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if the urgency-induced loss of goal control extends beyond eye movements.
  • To determine if this phenomenon is specific to visual-oculomotor control or a more general cognitive mechanism.
  • To examine the role of cognitive control in mediating stimulus-driven actions under urgency.

Main Methods:

  • Experiments involving manual tasks designed to elicit goal-conflicting responses.
  • Analysis of behavioral responses to assess the dominance of stimulus features over task goals.
  • Examination of trial-to-trial signatures indicative of cognitive control mechanisms.

Main Results:

  • Urgency caused goal-conflicting stimulus features to dominate behavioral responses in manual tasks.
  • This stimulus dominance followed established patterns of cognitive control, replicating across tasks.
  • The findings indicate that urgency temporarily shifts control from goals to external stimuli.

Conclusions:

  • The observed phenomenon of stimulus-driven action under urgency is not limited to eye movements.
  • Urgency broadly overcomes cognitive control, forcing stimulus-driven behavior across different tasks.
  • This suggests a general mechanism where urgency temporarily disrupts goal-directed action by prioritizing external stimuli.