Diverging Influences of Punishment Motivation and Negative Affect on Cognitive Control

The modulation of cognitive control by threat of punishment has been under-characterized relative to examinations of reward, with mixed findings reported in the literature. Across two experiments, we examined the balance of proactive and reactive control in the AX-CPT under several negative affect and punishment manipulations. In Experiment 1, we compared cognitive control performance between two task phases: an Affect phase, in which emotionally evocative images were used to induce either Fear, Anger, or Neutral affect, and a Punishment phase, in which the threat of receiving mild electric shocks was either performance-contingent, or unavoidable. In Experiment 2, we examined cognitive control under punishment that was both unavoidable and uncertain, and whether effects of such punishment varied by individual differences in trait anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty. Across both experiments, we observed that threat of punishment was associated with increased proactive control, and that this effect was heightened when punishment was performance-contingent. In contrast, punishment uncertainty did not appear to modulate cognitive control outcomes at the group level. However, exploratory analyses suggested that punishment uncertainty might interact with individual variability in trait anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty, and threat-related physiological arousal responses to shape control outcomes. Together, our findings support an account in which the presence of a motivator, regardless of valence, facilitates increased proactive control. In contrast, the relationship between negative affect and cognitive control outcomes may be more complex, and vary both with contextual factors and individual differences.