Punishment Sensitivity Predicts the Impact of Punishment on Cognitive Control

Cognitive control theories predict enhanced conflict adaptation after punishment. However, no such effect was found in previous work. In the present study, we demonstrate in a flanker task how behavioural adjustments following punishment signals are highly dependent on punishment sensitivity (as measured by the Behavioural Inhibition System (BIS) scale): Whereas low punishment-sensitive participants do show increased conflict adaptation after punishment, high punishment-sensitive participants show no such modulation. Interestingly, participants with a high punishment-sensitivity showed an overall reaction time increase after punishments. Our results stress the role of individual differences in explaining motivational modulations of cognitive control.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  PLoS ONE

• Publication date

  2013-09-13

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0074106PMID 24058520PMCID 3772886
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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