Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The ability to regulate mental processes is a critical component of human cognition. People vary in their ability ofcognitive control, with some showing more focused attention and less distractions from environmental stimulus. Who arethese people and what makes them better at cognitive control? This study attempts to answer these questions by examiningthe individual differences in cognitive control using variants of executive function tasks. Participants were given a flankertask which included congruent, incongruent and neutral trials, and all the trials were randomized and blocked based ondifferent visual angles of flankers ranging from 4.6 to 0.9. Participants were then given a standard Simon task (measure ofinhibition) and color-shape task (measure of switch). Results indicate that as the visual angle decreases, the interferencefrom flankers increases. More importantly, people who are better at inhibition or switch show a lesser extent of increasein interference.