Remembering to prepare: The benefits (and costs) of high working memory capacity.

The dual mechanisms of control framework postulates that cognitive control can operate in 2 distinct modes: a "proactive" preparatory mode and a "reactive" wait-and-see mode. Importantly, the 2 modes are associated with both costs and benefits in cognitive performance. Here we explore this framework, in terms of its relationship with working memory capacity (WMC). We hypothesize that high-WMC individuals are more likely to utilize proactive control yielding not only benefits, but also specific costs to performance. Across 2 separate, large-sample experiments, healthy young adults performed different variants of the AX-Continuous Performance Test context processing task, a well-established probe of proactive and reactive cognitive control. In 2 experiments, WMC predicted both improvements and relative impairments in task performance in a manner that was consistent with usage of proactive control. These findings suggest that individuals differ in the degree to which they utilize proactive control based on WMC. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).