Abstract: How do people allocate cognitive control when the world makes it hard—when tasks are complex, time is scarce, goals compete, and feedback is noisy? In this talk, I integrate two strands of my research that address this question at complementary levels. First, drawing on my cognitive neuroscience work, I describe evidence that the frontoparietal multiple-demand (MD) system supports flexible, goal-directed behaviour by adapting its recruitment as demands increase (e.g., complexity, time pressure) and as motivational context changes, and by jointly representing task and stimulus information. Second, I show how process-tracing approaches—especially eye-tracking and related behavioural signatures—make control allocation visible over time, revealing strategy shifts that are invisible in choices or accuracy alone. I then connect these mechanistic and measurement insights to my applied behavioural science programme, including field experiments in education that reduce friction, strengthen adoption of effective practices, and build confidence to sustain learning-related behaviours. The talk links (i) control allocation and strategy, (ii) interpretable measurement from behavioural traces, and (iii) control-informed intervention design—using education as a mechanism-revealing testbed.

About the Speaker: Sneha Shashidhara is a cognitive neuroscientist and behavioural scientist, currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change (CSBC) at Ashoka University. She received her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge, where she studied the functional organisation of the frontoparietal multiple-demand network supporting executive control. Her work integrates fMRI, eye-tracking, computational/ML methods, and field experiments, with applications spanning decision-making, education (foundational literacy and numeracy), and public health.

We look forward to your active participation.