Abstract: The study of proactive and reactive control provides an important new insight into cognitive control. Proactive control serves to prevent interference before it occurs by actively maintaining goal-related information, whereas reactive control can resolve interference after its onset by reactivating goal-related information. There is a tradeoff between these two kinds of control to optimize task performance. Several paradigms, such as AX-CPT, combined with ERP/fMRI techniques, have been utilized to investigate proactive and reactive control, revealing the temporal dynamics and location of brain activity (e.g., lateral PFC) under proactive versus reactive control. The tradeoff between these two controls can be influenced by physical development (e.g., age), cognitive factors (e.g., fluid intelligence, expectation, training), non-cognitive factors (e.g., emotion, motivation). Further researches should integrate with the study of conflict control and focus more on the computational and neural mechanisms behind such a tradeoff.

Key words: cognitive control, proactive control, reactive control, tradeoff