cognitive-control

Removal test: cognitive-control (deliberate regulation of mental processes to achieve goals) requires attention to direct focus. Remove attention and cognitive-control has no mechanism to regulate — it stops operating.

cognitive-control requires working-memory to hold and manipulate the representations needed for deliberate regulation. Removal test: remove working-memory and cognitive-control loses the capacity to maintain goals and manipulate mental content across time.

cognitive-control is a specific kind of executive function — the set of top-down mental processes needed to regulate thoughts and actions toward goals. A competent cognitive scientist would call cognitive control 'an executive function.' The accepted definition of executive-function supports this as a subtype. Follows Law 9: specific→general.

self-regulation (managing thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to achieve goals) requires cognitive-control (deliberate regulation of mental processes) as its operating mechanism. Removal test: remove cognitive-control and self-regulation loses its capacity to deliberately regulate — it stops operating. Not historical (DERIVED_FROM) but present-tense dependency.

Epistemic rationality (forming accurate beliefs via proper reasoning) requires cognitive control to inhibit biased intuitions, maintain truth-directed goals, and sustain deliberate reasoning. Removal test: remove cognitive control and epistemic rationality stops operating — you cannot hold yourself to epistemic standards, suppress confirmation bias, or execute truth-conducive reasoning strategies. Present-tense dependency: the map of rational belief formation needs executive control to function.

Distraction is the process of having attention diverted from its current focus. Cognitive-control is the capacity to direct and sustain attention. The removal test: remove cognitive-control and there is no established attentional focus to be disrupted — distraction requires attention to be directed somewhere before it can be diverted. Without cognitive-control, the whole framework of sustained attention collapses, and with it the mechanism of distraction. Distraction operates by overriding cognitive-control, not independently of it.