Does cognitive control have a general stability/flexibility tradeoff problem?

Abstract

The claim that cognitive control is constrained by a general stability–flexibility tradeoff dimension has inspired research, ranging from modeling of basic control phenomena to cognitive implications for psychiatric conditions. Yet, the results with variants of the task-switching paradigm show (1) evidence of ‘anti-tradeoff’ patterns (co-occurrence of stability and flexibility), (2) that when tradeoffs do exist, they are often directly tied to highly specific memory representations, and (3) that there is little conclusive evidence of tradeoffs for naturally occurring variability within or between individuals. Instead of a general tradeoff dimension, we suggest conceptualizing cognitive task control in terms of navigating a cognitive map that represents competing states (tasks) with varying degrees of resolution (depending on top-down control), and where high-resolution encoding supports both stability and flexibility.