The effect of emotional motivation on strategy flexibility: the moderating role of task load

Introduction: Research has demonstrated that cognitive flexibility is associated with academic achievement, with poorer cognitive flexibility being linked to poorer academic performance. Strategy conversion is an example of cognitive flexibility, which requires individuals to quickly and flexibly switch between strategies depending on the task at hand. Studies have investigated the impact of emotional motivation on cognitive flexibility, with varying results. Furthermore, research has indicated that a high task load increases psychological burden and reduces cognitive flexibility, but few studies have analyzed the impact of task load on the relationship between emotional motivation and cognitive flexibility. This study sought to investigate the effect of emotional motivation on cognitive flexibility based on strategy switching, and the moderating effect of task load. Methods: Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 used forced conversion paradigm with a moderate task load that required participants to estimate tasks using a given strategy. Experiment 2 employed matched conversion paradigm with a high task load, informing participants of the strategies to be used but without any clues, necessitating the selection and execution of appropriate strategies based on the question features. Experiment 3 adopted free conversion paradigm with a relatively low task load, allowing participants to freely choose and execute strategies without any correctness or error criteria. Results: The intensity and direction of emotional motivation have a complicated and fluctuating impact on the flexibility to utilize strategies. When the task workload is high, the intensity of emotional motivation has a significant impact on strategy utilization flexibility, with low approach motivation being more conducive to flexibility. Conversely, when the task workload is low, the direction of emotional motivation has a greater effect, with high avoidance motivation being more advantageous. Discussion: This study demonstrated that high workload could bring about a low intensity advantage, while low workload could induce an avoidance direction advantage, suggesting that task load could moderate the impact of emotional motivation on arithmetic strategy utilization flexibility, and avoidance motivation is not always detrimental to cognitive flexibility.