Machine Psychophysics: Cognitive Control in Vision-Language Models

Cognitive control refers to the ability to flexibly coordinate thought and action in pursuit of internal goals. A standard method for assessing cognitive control involves conflict tasks that contrast congruent and incongruent trials, measuring the ability to prioritize relevant information while suppressing interference. We evaluated 108 vision-language models on three classic conflict tasks and their more demanding ”squared” variants across 2,220 trials. Model performance corresponds closely to human behavior under resource constraints and reveals individual differences. This results indicate that some form of human-like executive function—albeit limited—may have emerged in current multi-modal foun- dational models.