Can’t wait to relax: Prospective relaxation of control as revealed by a future-based congruency sequence effect

In recent years, a growing literature investigated how cognitive control is regulated when explicit knowledge about upcoming conflict is available. In interference tasks, this work has been conducted by cueing whether the distractor and the target in an upcoming trial will be congruent or incongruent. To date however, it is unclear whether control is adapted upon cue presentation in a prospective fashion, or rather upon presentation of the cued stimulus. We examined this issue with a novel cueing paradigm in which the trials of an interference task were presented in pairs and the congruency of Trial 2 was either cued or uncued before the trial pair. Consistent with previous research, a cueing benefit emerged in Trial 2, albeit restricted to congruent trials. More importantly, although Trial 1 was never cued, across three experiments we observed a larger congruency effect when a congruent Trial 2 was cued. This congruency-effect modulation based on future congruency resembles that based on past congruency and suggests that the control state evoked by congruent cues is implemented upon cue presentation, with control being relaxed even before it should be.