The effects of task-relevant suggestions on motivated cognitive control

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Cognitive control manages behavioral adaptation to changing environments.
• Existing methods for enhancing cognitive control often lack generalizable, long-term effects.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review recent advancements in understanding cognitive control hierarchies.
• To elucidate the mechanisms and effects of direct-verbal suggestions on cognitive control.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing literature on cognitive control and suggestion paradigms.
• Analysis of studies employing tasks like Stroop, Simon, Flanker, Go-NoGo, and tone-monitoring.

Main Results:

• Task-relevant suggestions (hypnotic and nonhypnotic) reliably improve cognitive control performance.
• Effects are generalizable across different cognitive control aspects (inhibition, working memory updating) and tasks.
• Evidence for these effects spans over three decades and multiple independent labs.

Conclusions:

• Direct-verbal suggestions offer a promising, effective method for enhancing cognitive control.
• Findings have implications for cognitive training and understanding motivated, hierarchical control and hypnotic phenomena.