Abstract
Failures in self-regulation are predictive of adverse cognitive, academic and vocational outcomes, yet the interplay between cognition and self-regulation failure remains elusive. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that lapses in self-regulation, as predicted by the strength model, can be induced in individuals using cognitive paradigms and whether such failures are related to cognitive performance. In Experiments 1, the stop-signal task (SST) was used to show reduced behavioral inhibition after performance of a cognitively demanding arithmetic task, but only in people with low arithmetic accuracy, when compared with SST performance following a simple discrimination task. Surprisingly, and inconsistently with existing models, subjects rapidly recovered without rest or glucose. In Experiment 2, depletions of both go-signal reaction times and response inhibition were observed when a simple detection task was used as a control. These experiments provide new evidence that cognitive self-regulation processes are influenced by cognitive performance, and subject to improvement and recovery without rest.
Highlights
Self-regulation is fundamental to human function, with many psycho-social problems, including drug addiction, obesity, and gambling, being directly linked to lapses in the capacity to maintain control over behavior and function
To investigate whether differences in cognitive performance influenced the depletion of self-regulation resources, participants were subdivided into two groups based on their performance on the arithmetic task: a high accuracy group including participants whose accuracy measures approached ceiling, with a total error rate below 5% (n = 20, M error rate = 3.14, SEM = 0.29), and a low accuracy group with total error rates above 5% (n = 15, M error rate = 10.54, SEM = 1.24)
Contrary to the predictions of the strength model, impairment of stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) appeared to recover by the second block of the stop-signal task (SST), this recovery was at the expense of go-signal motor speed; motor RTs were significantly slower for blocks 2 and 3 for the low accuracy group, but not the high accuracy group
Summary
Self-regulation is fundamental to human function, with many psycho-social problems, including drug addiction, obesity, and gambling, being directly linked to lapses in the capacity to maintain control over behavior and function. There has been a surge of research in support of the strength model of self-regulation (for meta-analysis see Hagger et al, 2010) According to this model, self-regulation across various domains, ranging from cognition to social processes, draws upon a common resource that depletes with use (Baumeister et al, 1998; Baumeister and Vohs, 2007), and replenishes with rest or glucose intake (Gailliot and Baumeister, 2007; Gailliot et al, 2007; Tyler and Burns, 2008). Many researchers believe that resource depletion partially explains many cases of lapses in self-regulation, ranging from ordinary overeating through to addictive behaviors, and impulsive violence (e.g.,Vohs and Heatherton, 2000; Baumeister et al, 2006; Baumeister and Tierney, 2011; Hofmann et al, 2012)
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