Knowledge in memory is vast and not always relevant to the task at hand. Recent views suggest that the human cognitive system has evolved so that it includes goal-driven control mechanisms to regulate the level of activation of specific pieces of knowledge and make distracting or unwanted information in memory less accessible. This operation is primarily directed to facilitate the use of task-relevant knowledge. However, these control processes may also have side effects on performance in a variety of situations when the task at hand partly relies on access to suppressed information. In this article, we show that various types of information to be used in a variety of different contexts (problem solving, decision making based on personal information, language production) may be the target of inhibitory control. We also show that the control process may leave a behavioral signature if suppressed information turns out to be relevant shortly after being suppressed.

记忆中的知识是巨大的，并不总是与手头的任务相关。最近的观点表明，人类认知系统已经进化，因此它包括目标驱动的控制机制，以调节特定知识片段的激活水平，并使记忆中分散注意力或不需要的信息更难获取。此操作主要是为了方便使用与任务相关的知识。然而，当手头的任务部分依赖于对抑制信息的访问时，这些控制过程也可能对各种情况下的性能产生副作用。在本文中，我们展示了在各种不同上下文中使用的各种类型的信息（解决问题、基于个人信息的决策、语言生成）可能是抑制控制的目标。