Abstract
Although a great deal of literature has been dedicated to the mutual links between emotion and the selective attention component of executive control, there is very little data regarding the links between emotion and the inhibitory component of executive control. In the current study we employed an emotional stop-signal task in order to examine whether emotion modulates and is modulated by inhibitory control. Results replicated previous findings showing reduced inhibitory control [longer stop-signal reaction time (SSRT)] following negative, compared to neutral pictures. Most importantly, results show decreased emotional interference following stop-signal trials. These results show that the inhibitory control component of executive control can serve to decrease emotional effects. We suggest that inhibitory control and emotion have a two-way connection in which emotion disrupts inhibitory control and activation of inhibitory control disrupts emotion.
Highlights
Emotional stimuli play a major role in human lives
In order to investigate our a-priori assumption that following stop-signal trials negative stimuli would not affect reaction time (RT), a TwoWay analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures was applied to RT data of no-stop trials with valence and previous trial as within-subject factors
In no stop-signal trials, responses to the discrimination task were slower when preceded by negative stimuli than when preceded by neutral stimuli; namely, we found an emotional interference effect (Hartikainen et al, 2000; Schimmack, 2005)
Summary
Emotional stimuli play a major role in human lives. They are considered to receive prioritized processing and affect behavior, cognition, and physiology. Executive control is considered to be a “high” order system that incorporates several attentional subsystems (Posner and Petersen, 1990; Verbruggen and Logan, 2008; Banich, 2009), which act together in order to guide behavior in accordance with internal goals (Shallice and Norman, 1986; Miyake et al, 2000; Miller and Cohen, 2001; Banich, 2009). Both emotion and executive control are crucial elements in goal-directed behavior. The aim of the current study is to investigate the connection between inhibitory control—a component of executive control—and emotion eliciting stimuli (i.e., negative pictures)
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