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 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.

Automated summary

Standard clinical and psychiatric thinking often focuses on the absence of normality, but recent evidence suggests that cognitive control is not solely about willpower. The metacontrol model proposes a dimension of persistence and flexibility in cognitive processing styles. It is argued that individuals should not simply be categorized as typical or atypical, but rather their cognitive abilities should be characterized in terms of underlying dimensions. Neurodevelopmental atypicality often comes with weaknesses in one pole but strengths in the other pole.