Matching contexts matters: Evidence for cross-paradigm transfer of cognitive control strategies

The plasticity of cognitive control is a hallmark of human cognition, and previous research has examined how repeated task experience leads to the improvement of cognitive control in novel task environments. However, the factors enabling such transfer remain hotly debated. This series of three studies directly explored specific strategies that might underlie adults' successful transfer of cognitive control. We focused on proactive control, a strategy hypothesized to rely on overlapping control operations across cognitive control tasks. However, in Experiment 1 (n = 156), our Bayesian analyses demonstrated the absence of transfer of proactive control from a cued task-switching task to an AX-Continuous Performance Test. Experiments 2 (n = 148) and 3 (n = 174) therefore focused on goal-irrelevant contextual information in addition to proactive control strategies. Experiment 2 provided moderate evidence that matching goal-irrelevant information, such as backgrounds and trial timelines, facilitated the transfer of cognitive control. Experiment 3 replicated these findings, indicating that the cross-paradigm transfer occurred when goal-irrelevant contextual backgrounds are matched. These findings underscore the importance of broadening the existing research focus on goal-relevant information to also consider goal-irrelevant task knowledge when examining cross-paradigm transfer. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).