Defining goals and behaviors that exemplify "good" cognitive control

Identify which goals and behaviors should operationally exemplify "good" cognitive control, specifying the criteria by which control effectiveness is to be evaluated in empirical research.

Background

The authors emphasize that disparate working definitions of cognitive control lead to inconsistent assumptions about what counts as successful control behavior. This ambiguity hampers theory development and measurement, especially given the wide range of contexts in which control is studied.

Clarifying which goals and behaviors constitute exemplary cognitive control would help align psychological constructs with neuroscientific models and enable more consistent operationalization across studies and paradigms.

References

Although much progress has been made towards characterizing cognitive control at multiple levels of analysis, many open questions remain. At present, working descriptions of cognitive control make different assumptions about what behaviors to focus on, the kinds of processes or representations involved, and how neural substrates instantiate control processes and representations. As such, questions remain about the goals and behaviors that exemplify "good" cognitive control, whether control processes and abilities are domain specific vs. domain general, and whether and how neural systems implement putative processes and mental representations.

— Neural dynamics of cognitive control: Current tensions and future promise  (2511.02063 - Zhou et al., 3 Nov 2025) in Introduction