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A Metacontrol Perspective on Neurocognitive Atypicality: From Unipolar to Bipolar Accounts

Standard clinical and psychiatric thinking follows a unipolar logic that is centered at “normal” conditions characterized by optimal performance in everyday life, with more atypical conditions being defined by the (degree of) absence of “normality.” A similar logic has been used to describe cognitiv...

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Autores principales: Colzato, Lorenza S., Beste, Christian, Zhang, Wenxin, Hommel, Bernhard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9260173/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35815021
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.846607
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author Colzato, Lorenza S.
Beste, Christian
Zhang, Wenxin
Hommel, Bernhard
author_facet Colzato, Lorenza S.
Beste, Christian
Zhang, Wenxin
Hommel, Bernhard
author_sort Colzato, Lorenza S.
collection PubMed
description Standard clinical and psychiatric thinking follows a unipolar logic that is centered at “normal” conditions characterized by optimal performance in everyday life, with more atypical conditions being defined by the (degree of) absence of “normality.” A similar logic has been used to describe cognitive control, assuming that optimal control abilities are characterized by a strong focus on the current goal and ignorance of goal-irrelevant information (the concept of willpower), while difficulties in focusing and ignoring are considered indications of the absence of control abilities. However, there is increasing evidence that willpower represents only one side of the control coin. While a strong focus on the current goal can be beneficial under some conditions, other conditions would benefit from a more open mind, from flexibility to consider alternative goals and information related to them. According to the metacontrol model, people can vary in their cognitive processing style, on a dimension with the extreme poles of “persistence” on the one hand and “flexibility” on the other. Whereas a high degree of persistence corresponds to the original idea of cognitive control as willpower, with a strong focus on one goal and the information related to it, a high degree of flexibility is characterized by a more integrative, less selective and exclusive processing style, which facilitates switching between tasks, ideas, and actions, and taking into consideration a broader range of possibilities. We argue that this approach calls for a more bipolar account in the clinical sciences as well. Rather than considering individuals as typical or atypical, it would theoretically and practically make more sense to characterize their cognitive abilities in terms of underlying dimensions, such as the persistence/flexibility dimension. This would reveal that possible weaknesses with respect to one pole, such as persistence, and tasks relying thereupon, may come with corresponding strengths with respect to the other pole, such as flexibility, and respective tasks. We bolster our claim by discussing available evidence suggesting that neurodevelopmental atypicality often comes with weaknesses in tasks related to one pole but strengths in tasks related to the other.
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spelling pubmed-92601732022-07-08 A Metacontrol Perspective on Neurocognitive Atypicality: From Unipolar to Bipolar Accounts Colzato, Lorenza S. Beste, Christian Zhang, Wenxin Hommel, Bernhard Front Psychiatry Psychiatry Standard clinical and psychiatric thinking follows a unipolar logic that is centered at “normal” conditions characterized by optimal performance in everyday life, with more atypical conditions being defined by the (degree of) absence of “normality.” A similar logic has been used to describe cognitive control, assuming that optimal control abilities are characterized by a strong focus on the current goal and ignorance of goal-irrelevant information (the concept of willpower), while difficulties in focusing and ignoring are considered indications of the absence of control abilities. However, there is increasing evidence that willpower represents only one side of the control coin. While a strong focus on the current goal can be beneficial under some conditions, other conditions would benefit from a more open mind, from flexibility to consider alternative goals and information related to them. According to the metacontrol model, people can vary in their cognitive processing style, on a dimension with the extreme poles of “persistence” on the one hand and “flexibility” on the other. Whereas a high degree of persistence corresponds to the original idea of cognitive control as willpower, with a strong focus on one goal and the information related to it, a high degree of flexibility is characterized by a more integrative, less selective and exclusive processing style, which facilitates switching between tasks, ideas, and actions, and taking into consideration a broader range of possibilities. We argue that this approach calls for a more bipolar account in the clinical sciences as well. Rather than considering individuals as typical or atypical, it would theoretically and practically make more sense to characterize their cognitive abilities in terms of underlying dimensions, such as the persistence/flexibility dimension. This would reveal that possible weaknesses with respect to one pole, such as persistence, and tasks relying thereupon, may come with corresponding strengths with respect to the other pole, such as flexibility, and respective tasks. We bolster our claim by discussing available evidence suggesting that neurodevelopmental atypicality often comes with weaknesses in tasks related to one pole but strengths in tasks related to the other. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-06-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9260173/ /pubmed/35815021 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.846607 Text en Copyright © 2022 Colzato, Beste, Zhang and Hommel. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychiatry
Colzato, Lorenza S.
Beste, Christian
Zhang, Wenxin
Hommel, Bernhard
A Metacontrol Perspective on Neurocognitive Atypicality: From Unipolar to Bipolar Accounts
title A Metacontrol Perspective on Neurocognitive Atypicality: From Unipolar to Bipolar Accounts
title_full A Metacontrol Perspective on Neurocognitive Atypicality: From Unipolar to Bipolar Accounts
title_fullStr A Metacontrol Perspective on Neurocognitive Atypicality: From Unipolar to Bipolar Accounts
title_full_unstemmed A Metacontrol Perspective on Neurocognitive Atypicality: From Unipolar to Bipolar Accounts
title_short A Metacontrol Perspective on Neurocognitive Atypicality: From Unipolar to Bipolar Accounts
title_sort metacontrol perspective on neurocognitive atypicality: from unipolar to bipolar accounts
topic Psychiatry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9260173/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35815021
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.846607
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