To start or stop an action depends on which movement we perform: An appraisal of the horse–race model

Abstract

In order to gauge the executive processes underlying adaptive behavior, a central criterion in psychology is the extent to which experimental findings generalize across response types. The latency of two major acts of control, action initiation and inhibition, was evaluated using a stop–signal paradigm with two response types, involving either a finger key–pressing or a wrist pen–swiping response. In both conditions, 40 participants were instructed to respond quickly to a GO stimulus but to cancel their responses when a STOP signal was presented, which occurred randomly in 25% of the trials. Taken together, analyses of reaction times and of inhibition probability functions indicated that action initiation generalized across the two response types. In contrast, the finger key–pressing and the wrist pen–swiping responses involved independent inhibition processes. These results challenge a strictly top–down view for some acts of control by showing an interaction between the executive and motor levels in terms of response modality specificity.