Switching between cognitive control states? No, thank you

Cognitive control enables adaptive behavior by flexibly adjusting information processing to meet changing environmental demands. While extensive research has examined the costs of switching between different tasks, it remains unclear whether switching between different control states (relaxed and focused) within a single task carries intrinsic costs. We hypothesized that internally switching between control states while performing a single task incurs a subjective effort cost and, therefore, that people avoid such demands. Additionally, we examined the trade-off between this cost and interference demands. We conducted a series of experiments using the Demand Selection Task, where participants chose between different options that yielded lists of Stroop trials. Participants consistently avoided options with high demands for internal control-state switching (Experiment 1, N = 64) or interference (Experiment 2, N = 86). Regarding the potential trade-off, Experiment 3 (N = 120) tested whether internal control-state switching demands modulate interference costs when both are present. There was no evidence for this modulation, but this could be because the structure of the Stroop task only allowed for relatively weak manipulations of control-state switching and interference. To address this limitation, we developed a novel parametric flanker task (Experiment 4, N = 50) that enables strong simultaneous manipulation of both demands. With these stronger manipulations, both control-state switching and interference costs influenced selections, revealing trade-offs between these competing demands (Experiment 5, N = 130). Our findings refine models of control regulation, highlighting that not only exerting but also adjusting control carries intrinsic costs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).