Reactive and proactive control in arithmetical strategy selection

We correlated proactive and reactive measures obtained from the AX-CPT and an adjusted Nback task with a measure of strategy adaptiveness during a numerosity judgment task. The results showed that both measures of reactive control (of the AX-CPT and N-back task) correlated positively with strategy adaptiveness, while proactive control was not. This suggests that both cognitive control modes might have a different effect on adaptive strategy selection, where adaptive strategy selection seems to benefit from a transient (late) control mode, reactive control.

We discuss these results in the light of the Dual Mechanisms Framework.