Proactively Adjusting Stopping: Response Inhibition is Faster when Stopping Occurs Frequently

Roos A. Doekemeijer; Anneleen Dewulf; Frederick Verbruggen; C. Nico Boehler

doi:10.5334/joc.264

journal article Open Access May 04, 2023

Proactively Adjusting Stopping: Response Inhibition is Faster when Stopping Occurs Frequently

Roos A. Doekemeijer

Anneleen Dewulf

Frederick Verbruggen

C. Nico Boehler

Journal of Cognition Vol. 6 No. 1 pp. 22 · Ubiquity Press, Ltd.

View at Publisher Save 10.5334/joc.264

Abstract

People are able to stop actions before they are executed, and proactively slow down the speed of going in line with their expectations of needing to stop. Such slowing generally increases the probability that stopping will be successful. Surprisingly though, no study has clearly demonstrated that the speed of stopping (measured as the stop-signal reaction time, SSRT) is reduced by such proactive adjustments. In addition to a number of studies showing non-significant effects, the only study that initially had observed a clear effect in this direction found that it was artifactually driven by a confounding variable (specifically, by context-independence violations, which jeopardize the validity of the SSRT estimation). Here, we tested in two well-powered and well-controlled experiments whether the SSRT is shorter when stopping is anticipated. In each experiment, we used a Stop-Signal Task, in which the stop-trial frequency was either high (50%) or low (20%). Our results robustly show that the SSRT was shorter when stop signals were more anticipated (i.e., in the high-frequent condition) while carefully controlling for context-independence violations. Hence, our study is first to demonstrate a clear proactive benefit on the speed of stopping, in line with an ability to emphasize going or stopping, by trading off the speed of both.

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Metrics

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Citations

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References

Details

Published: May 04, 2023
Vol/Issue: 6(1)
Pages: 22
License: View

Authors

Vanderbilt University; Ghent University

C

C. Nico Boehler

Cite This Article

Roos A. Doekemeijer, Anneleen Dewulf, Frederick Verbruggen, et al. (2023). Proactively Adjusting Stopping: Response Inhibition is Faster when Stopping Occurs Frequently. Journal of Cognition, 6(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.264

Proactively Adjusting Stopping: Response Inhibition is Faster when Stopping Occurs Frequently

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