The human capability of flexible cognitive control is associated with appropriately regulating the amount of cognitive control in response to contextual demands. In the context of conflicting resolutions, for instance, the amount of cognitive control ...
The human capability of flexible cognitive control is associated with appropriately regulating the amount of cognitive control in response to contextual demands. In the context of conflicting resolutions, for instance, the amount of cognitive control is increased with the level of conflict that previously experienced, resulting in optimizing performance. The Present study explored whether the amount of cognitive control for conflict resolution is related with individual differences in cognitive style, the preference for modality-specific information, using Object-Spatial-Verbal cognitive style questionnaire. In this fMRI study, a version of the color-word Stroop task, that evokes conflict between color and verbal components, was employed to explore whether preference for distracting information is related with increase of neural conflict adaptation in cognitive control network regions. Behavioral data revealed that the more prefer verbal style the greater conflict adaptation effects were observed especially when the current trial type was congruent. Consistent with the behavioral data, imaging results demonstrated that neural conflict adaptation effects in the task-relevant network regions including left DLPFC, left fusiform gyrus, and left precuneus were increased with the preference for verbal style. The results provide new evidence that flexible cognitive control is closely associated with individuals’ preference on cognitive style.