Our research program on affective control focuses on conflict monitoring, adaptation, and proactive control in task relevant positive and negative emotions using the face-word Stroop task looking at the congruency sequence effects. Our studies suggest that affective conflict adaptation is modulated by the content of emotions with negative emotions recruiting greater proactive control driven by narrowing of attention and complexity of processing in case of negative emotion (Kar et al., 2018). Using this paradigm we have also observed a motivational shift in affective bias towards positive affect in middle aged and older adults through implicit recruitment of cognitive control (Nigam & Kar, 2021).

Kar, B. R., Nigam, R., Pammi, V.S.C., Gularia, A., & Srinivasan, N. (2019). Neuro-cognitive mechanisms of affective conflict adaptation: An event related fMRI study. Progress in Brain Research, Emotion and Cognition, 246, Elsevier.

Kar, B. R., Srinivasan, N., Nehabala, Y., & Nigam, R. (2018). Proactive and reactive control depends on emotional valence: A Stroop study with expressions and words. Cognition and Emotion, 32(2): 325-340. DOI: 10.1080/ 02699931.2017.1304897