Abstract
The Impulsivity/Reflexivity issue in inhibitory control ability has seldom been investigated in terms of individual differences in typically developing populations. Although there is evidence of changes in executive functioning (EF), including inhibition, in adolescence, very little is known about the role of individual differences. Using the data from 240 14-to-19-year-old high school students who completed a battery of EF tasks (Flanker, Go No-Go, Antisaccade, and Stop signal task), measures of emotion regulation strategies and behavioral difficulties, we performed a latent profile analysis to identify qualitatively distinct score profiles. The results showed the existence in adolescence of two inhibition profiles, Impulsive vs Reflexive, differing in performances at the inhibition tasks. The two profiles were not associated with socio-demographic characteristics, or to psychological variables, such as behavioral characteristics and emotional regulation strategies.
Highlights
Inhibition is one of the core abilities of Executive Function (EF), a set of top-down processes that allow people to regulate their thoughts and behaviors (Miyake & Friedman, 2012)
Performance in inhibition tasks did not differ between genders; age was significantly associated, albeit weakly, with slower reaction times (RTs) and higher accuracy
Significant correlations were found for self-report measures, while only a few weak correlations were found between EF and self-report measures (|.18|< rs
Summary
Inhibition is one of the core abilities of Executive Function (EF), a set of top-down processes that allow people to regulate their thoughts and behaviors (Miyake & Friedman, 2012). EFs have a prolonged development over time, from early infancy until late adolescence up to young adulthood (Best & Miller, 2010; Johnson, 2000, 2001; Luna et al, 2004), and inhibition emerges early, showing a significant peak of development in preschool age (see e.g., Best & Miller, 2010) Changes in their latent organization occur early on in development and separated inhibitory dimensions, such as the ability to stop a prepotent response and the ability to suppress the stimuli interference, can be already observed at age 3 (Gandolfi et al, 2014). The hypothesis about differences in the baseline of these processes is consistent with the existing behavioral literature (Haghighi et al, 2015; Quiroga et al, 2007)
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