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Fluctuations in preparatory cognitive control have important behavioral consequences for goal-directed attentional selection. In particular, the speed with which individuals update selections varies according to preparatory control settings. We tested whether the statistical properties of an environment persistently modulated preparatory states of attentional control. In each of three experiments, participants held and shifted attention between two rapid serial visual presentation streams of alphanumeric characters in response to visual cues. Behavioral response times (RT) to target stimuli immediately following a cue provided an index of attentional flexibility. In Experiment 1, we varied the frequency of shift and hold cues across time during a training phase. Shift costs were smaller at intervals when shift cues were frequent, suggesting that control settings were modulated according to the statistical structure. In a …