Self-Control II Discussion
Monicarodr
As Lindsay points out, this section focused on strategies for
regulating emotion and behavior and its neural correlates. Perhaps as
a residual of last week’s discussion on free-will, consciousness, and
self-control, this week I had the concept of effort (and Beka’s
points) in mind while I read this set of articles. So I will try to
bring this construct to our current discussion.
First, some points about effort (from Preston & Wegner, and Morsella,
Krieger, & Bargh (2009); Chapters from the Oxford Handbook of Human
Action, E. Morsella, Bargh, J. A., & Gollwitzer, P. M. (Eds.)
- Effort is defined mostly as an experience, feeling of energy being
exerted.
- Lay theories of action see effort as: internal (taps on internal
resources), motivated (in pursuit of goals), under personal control
(agent is the personal force and causal source of action), and more
successful when compared to effortless (automatic) goal achievement.
- Mere consciousness of a stimulus differs from mental concentration
in that the latter is deliberate, intensive (increases in physical
arousal, cortisol and cardio-vascular response), and contracts
corrugator muscles in the face (furrowed brow increases feeling of
effort)
- Effort provides feedback about task difficulty so actor adjusts
exertion appropriately; prompts conservation of energy; and gives
feelings of personal authorship (it is the self who is responsible for
the action)
- Any voluntary action involves muscle-skeletal response; greater
efferent activity increases feeling of effort
As Camille, Beka, Stuart, Jenny, point out, the questions become:
- Do cognitive strategies or top-down modulation of emotion and
behavior (for example, “reappraise” versus “distract” from emotionally
or arousing stimuli) require conscious intention?
- Do conscious cognitive self-regulatory strategies require more
effort than bottom-up strategies (e.g., distraction?) If so, do they
deplete more?
- Which of these strategies is more efficacious in the long run? Are
they contextually dependent?
- If the neural regions associated with these processes are taxed or
interfered, would their efficacy be affected in turn?
- Can reward expectations be regulated by similar cognitive
strategies?
- Lindsay, Camille and Jenny bring related questions from the Bunge et
al and Kober articles:
- If the anterior cingulate is involved in the detection of conflict
and the PFC in the resolution, at what point and involvement of which
neural region would cause more depletion?
- What types of cognitive processes are involved in cognitive load vs
interference?
- How do ADHD patients fare in these kinds of tasks, and what are
their neural patterns?
- Is smoking cessation/reduction via cognitive strategies depleting
and therefore these strategies may not prevent relapse?
Criticisms:
Stuart, Jenn, Beka: Wouldn’t Delgado results be even more convincing
given that conditioned stimuli would be weaker when associated with
money as opposed to something one is addicted to? Or is there a
fundamental difference according to you regarding the type of reward
that become addictive?
Lindsay: In what way are self-report with spatial presentation of
affective dimensions less useful than other self-report modes of
response?
Camille: Aren’t the immediate less severe consequences vs the delayed
more severe consequences similar to the typical now vs later self-
control paradigms?
David: I do not get what Delgado et al are doing wrong in their
statistical analysis (although, as Beka points out, details are
provided in a non-accessible website)