Executive Control – An Electrophysiological Investigation of Control Processes

Everyday behaviour requires constant coordination and monitoring in order for our actions to be successful. Within cognitive science such coordination and monitoring of behaviour is termed ‘control ’ and refers to a set of functions that serve to configure the mental system for performing specific acts. A system of cognitive control is thought to set high level goals and direct subordinate cognitive systems in order to accomplish those goals. This thesis utilises a cognitive electrophysiological approach to the study of executive control, addressing research questions concerning the mental processes that are modulated by executive control and the mechanisms underlying control-related processing adjustments. The first experimental chapter investigates the process of task switching. More specifically, how demanding is a proposed stage of endogenous task-set reconfiguration in terms of information processing? It was previously reported that the process of task-set reconfiguration constitutes a hard bottleneck delayin