When action expectation meets reward history: The interaction of proactive and reactive control during inhibitory control

Abstract

Flexibly inhibiting inappropriate responses based on current goals and past experiences is crucial. The dual-mechanism of control (DMC) model proposes that cognitive control involves proactive (expectation-driven) and reactive (stimulus-driven, such as reward history) control. However, how these mechanisms interact during inhibitory control remains unclear. We explored this interaction using cued and non-cued Go/NoGo tasks through two experiments, employing different reward training paradigms: value-driven attentional capture (VDAC, Experiment 1) and monetary incentive delay task (MIDT, Experiment 2). The results showed that reward history interacted with action expectation only when established via the MIDT (Experiment 2), with previously rewarded NoGo target showing lower commission errors under the unexpected condition. In contrast, reward history from the VDAC paradigm (Experiment 1) influenced inhibition independently of action expectation. Across both experiments, reward history generally facilitated response inhibition. These findings suggest that the relationship between proactive and reactive control is flexible, particularly when reactive control is dependent on the nature of prior reward learning. This study provides new insights into how humans weigh current goals with past experiences to guide adaptive behavior in dynamic environments.