Higher Inhibitory Control Research Articles

Horses' (Equus Caballus) Laterality, Stress Hormones, and Task Related Behavior in Innovative Problem-Solving.

Simple SummaryIn order to ensure species-appropriate horse keeping and management, knowledge about horses’ cognitive abilities is essential. One parameter used to measure the cognitive abilities of a species is their capacity for innovative behavior. In this study 16 horses where confronted with a novel problem, i.e., an unknown feeder. When a horse emptied the feeder completely it was considered to be innovative. We found 25% of the horses to be innovative. Horses’ propensity to innovate was mediated by individual behavioral differences and former life experiences. We conclude that horses’ keeping conditions and welfare may be improved by environmental enrichment which promotes the development of innovative behavior.Domesticated horses are constantly confronted with novel tasks. A recent study on anecdotal data indicates that some are innovative in dealing with such tasks. However, innovative behavior in horses has not previously been investigated under experimental conditions. In this study, we investigated whether 16 horses found an innovative solution when confronted with a novel feeder. Moreover, we investigated whether innovative behavior in horses may be affected by individual aspects such as: age, sex, size, motor and sensory laterality, fecal stress hormone concentrations (GCMs), and task-related behavior. Our study revealed evidence for 25% of the horses being capable of innovative problem solving for operating a novel feeder. Innovative horses of the present study were active, tenacious, and may be considered to have a higher inhibitory control, which was revealed by their task related behavior. Furthermore, they appeared to be emotional, reflected by high baseline GCM concentrations and a left sensory and motor laterality. These findings may contribute to the understanding of horses’ cognitive capacities to deal with their environment and calls for enriched environments in sports and leisure horse management.

The effect of experience and olfactory cue in an inhibitory control task in guppies, Poecilia reticulata

Behavioural responses to the environment often require the suppression of strong internal predispositions or the overriding of external lures, tasks performed by a cognitive function called inhibitory control. Inhibitory control of nonhuman animals is generally measured with the cylinder task: subjects are presented with food inside a transparent cylinder and must inhibit their tendency to reach the food directly and instead detour round the cylinder to solve the task. However, several studies have raised concerns about the validity of this test to compare different species. Recently, a tiny teleost fish, the guppy, Poecilia reticulata, was tested with the cylinder task and scored higher than many mammals and birds. Before considering that guppies display unpredictably high inhibitory control, it is important to exclude that they were advantaged by some noncognitive factors. In particular, guppies could enjoy three advantages: experience with transparent surfaces (i.e. the walls of maintenance aquaria), experience with detouring round see-through obstacles (vegetation in the maintenance aquaria) and the spread of food odour in the water from the sides of the cylinder. We tested whether these factors affect guppies' performance in the cylinder task by manipulating both their experience with transparent surfaces before the task and the diffusion of food odour cues from the cylinder. Guppies raised in transparent aquaria or with transparent panels placed inside the tank did not show advantages over guppies with no experience with transparent surfaces. Furthermore, the guppies’ performance was not reduced when the cylinder was pierced in the middle, so that both visual and olfactory cues lured them in the same direction. These results seem to exclude methodological explanations for the high inhibitory control score of guppies, and they indicate that even teleost fish can display efficient inhibitory control.

Cognitive, Emotional, and Physical Functioning as Predictors of Paid Employment in People With Stroke, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Spinal Cord Injury.

Our objective was to examine demographic, cognitive, emotional, and physical factors that predict return to paid employment for people after neurological injury. Four hundred eighty adults with stroke (n = 149), traumatic brain injury (n = 155), and spinal cord injury (n = 176) completed an occupational outcome questionnaire and physical, emotional, and cognitive assessments at three rehabilitation facilities. Odds of employment were predicted by being married or partnered, having more education, requiring fewer prompts for task sequencing, and having higher inhibitory control (but were not predicted by specific type of injury). Participants who returned to work within 3 mo were more likely to work with the same employer and to take a full-time position than those who returned later. Executive functioning, in particular sequencing and inhibitory control, strongly predicts employment and highlights the importance of cognitive strategy training during occupational therapy with people who have sustained neurological injuries.

The role of executive function in autobiographical memory retrieval: does the type of cue word matter?

ABSTRACTAutobiographical memories are memories for personally experienced life events. Previous research has revealed individual differences in the ability to recall specific memories that happened at a particular time and place. Some studies suggest such differences can be attributed to the varying capacity of executive function. However, little is known regarding which specific executive function skills predict autobiographical memory specificity. Participants were asked to complete multiple measures of executive function as well as an autobiographical memory task in which they were asked to recall a specific personal memory connected to concrete and abstract cue words. We hypothesised that executive function will be positively related to autobiographical memory specificity and that this relation will be moderated by the cue word type. The results revealed that individuals with higher executive function skills, specifically, higher inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility, recalled significantly more specific memories than those with lower executive function skills; however, no significant interaction between executive function ability and cue word type was found.

Resisting attraction: Individual differences in executive control are associated with subject-verb agreement errors in production.

We propose that attraction errors in agreement production (e.g., the key to the cabinets are missing) are related to two components of executive control: working memory and inhibitory control. We tested 138 children aged 10 to 12, an age when children are expected to produce high rates of errors. To increase the potential of individual variation in executive control skills, participants came from monolingual, bilingual, and bidialectal language backgrounds. Attraction errors were elicited with a picture description task in Dutch and executive control was measured with a digit span task, Corsi blocks task, switching task, and attentional networks task. Overall, higher rates of attraction errors were negatively associated with higher verbal working memory and, independently, with higher inhibitory control. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of the role of both working memory and inhibitory control in attraction errors in production. Implications for memory- and grammar-based models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Inhibitory control in typically developing preschoolers: Relations among temperament, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and behavior at age 4.

Although inhibitory control (IC) is associated with children's positive adjustment, we know relatively little about factors underlying its development. We examined whether baseline and on-task respiratory sinus arrhythmia [(RSA); a physiological measure of self-regulation] and private speech (a behavioral measure of self-regulation) interacted to confer differences on directly observed IC in 52 typically developing 4-year olds. We found that baseline RSA moderated the association between private speech and IC, such that private speech positively predicted IC in children with relatively higher baseline RSA, but was unrelated to IC in children with relatively lower RSA. We also found that children with a concordant physiological-behavioral pattern (i.e., high RSA and high private speech; low RSA and low private speech) had higher IC, higher effortful control, and lower negative emotionality than those with a discordant physiological-behavioral pattern (i.e., high RSA and low private speech; low RSA and high private speech). Individual differences in physiological and behavioral self-regulation indices may represent distinct regulation pathways that interact to confer differences in IC during the preschool years.

Correlação entre fatores de experiência linguística bilíngue e controle inibitório

Há um debate na literatura quanto à existência da vantagem bilíngue nas funções executivas e fatores linguísticos possivelmente associados a ela. Esta pesquisa exploratória teve por objetivo investigar quais fatores de experiência linguística bilíngue podem estar correlacionados com a vantagem bilíngue no controle inibitório. Descobriu-se que o controle inibitório se correlacionou positivamente com a quantidade de mixing (mistura de duas ou mais línguas ao se comunicar) que os bilíngues efetuavam. Houve também correlação negativa entre o controle inibitório e a idade de aquisição média de uma L3. Ambas as evidências estão em desacordo com as concepções acerca da relação entre fatores de experiência linguística efunções executivas vigentes na literatura, que preveria que a realização de mixing e a idade de aquisição de uma L3 estariam associados a um controle inibitório maior.

Fearful Inhibition, Inhibitory Control, and Maternal Negative Behaviors During Toddlerhood Predict Internalizing Problems at Age 6.

Many, but not all, young children with high levels of fearful inhibition will develop internalizing problems. Individual studies have examined either child regulatory or environmental factors that might influence the level of risk. We focused on the interaction of regulation and environment by assessing how early fearful inhibition at age 2, along with inhibitory control and maternal negative behaviors at age 3, interactively predicted internalizing problems at age 6. A total of 218 children (105 boys, 113 girls) and their mothers participated in the study. Results indicated a three-way interaction among fearful inhibition, inhibitory control, and maternal negative behaviors. The correlation between fearful inhibition and internalizing was significant only when children had low inhibitory control and experienced high levels of maternal negative behaviors. Either having high inhibitory control or experiencing low maternal negative behaviors buffered against the adverse effect caused by the absence of the other. These findings highlight the importance of considering associations among both within-child factors and environmental factors in studying children's socioemotional outcomes.

Self-restraint spillover: Inhibitory control disrupts appetite regulation among ruminators.

People can use inhibitory control to temporarily inhibit their personal preferences to achieve their long-term goals. According to the ego fixation model (Koole et al., 2014), ruminators have difficulties relaxing inhibitory control, leading them to continue inhibiting their personal needs, even when this is no longer required by the situation. Inhibitory control may thus disrupt healthy appetite regulation among ruminators. Among 324 Dutch undergraduate students (218 women; Mage = 21.5), different inhibitory control states were manipulated by varying whether or not participants exerted inhibitory control (Study 1) or priming high versus low inhibitory control (Study 2). All participants then performed a food-tasting task. Healthy appetite regulation was defined as a positive correlation between level of food deprivation and preference for high-calorie foods. For taste ratings, the interaction between inhibitory control and rumination was significant in each study: Inhibitory control disrupted healthy appetite regulation in taste preferences among ruminators, but not among non-ruminators. For eating behavior, the same interaction effect was significant when the two studies were combined. Inhibitory control disrupts healthy appetite regulation among ruminators. These findings suggest the need for caution in interventions that rely on inhibitory control, especially among samples with compulsive thought tendencies.

Developmental Origins of Rumination in Middle Childhood: The Roles of Early Temperament and Positive Parenting

Rumination, a thinking style characterized by a repetitive inward focus on negative cognitions, has been linked to internalizing disorders, particularly depression. Moreover, research suggests that rumination may be a cognitive vulnerability that predisposes individuals to psychopathology. Surprisingly little is known, however, about the etiology and development of rumination. The present study examined the role of specific components of child temperamental negative emotionality (sadness, fear, anger) and effortful control (inhibition), as well as parenting behaviors during early childhood on the development of rumination in middle childhood. Early childhood (age 3) temperament and parenting behaviors were assessed observationally and rumination was self-reported in middle childhood (age 9) in a large community sample (N = 425; 47.1% female). Two significant interactions emerged. First, temperamental anger interacted with inhibitory control (IC) such that high anger and low IC predicted higher levels of rumination, whereas low anger and low IC predicted lower levels of rumination. Second, IC interacted with parenting such that children with low IC and positive parenting had lower levels of rumination. In contrast, children with high IC reported similar levels of rumination regardless of parenting quality. Overall, these findings highlight the interplay of early IC with temperamental anger and positive parenting in the development of ruminative tendencies in middle childhood.

Differences in Young Children's Peer Preference by Inhibitory Control and Emotion Regulation.

This study investigated differences in young children's peer preference by inhibitory control and emotion regulation. In Study 1, 66 preschoolers (M = 5 years 11 months) were assessed for inhibitory control (IC), emotion regulation (ER), and peer preference. Stroop-like tasks (the black-white task and shine-rain task), the disappointing gift task, and a positive nomination measure were used as measures of IC, ER, and peer preference, respectively. The results of Study 1 showed that participants with high IC or high ER were popular with their peers in comparison to participants with low IC or low ER. Study 2 measured young children's (N = 43, M = 6 years 1 month) ER by comparing social judgment between a condition that induces negative emotion and a condition that does not. The results of Study 2 showed that participants with high IC or high ER (who could select appropriate behaviors, even when negative emotion was induced) had many mutual relations with friends compared to participants with low IC or low ER. These data indicate the role of inhibitory control and emotion regulation in young children's peer preference.

Determinants of aggressive behavior: Interactive effects of emotional regulation and inhibitory control.

Aggressive behavior can be defined as any behavior intended to hurt another person, and it is associated with many individual and social factors. This study examined the relationship between emotional regulation and inhibitory control in predicting aggressive behavior. Seventy-eight participants (40 males) completed self-report measures (Negative Mood Regulation Scale and Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire), a stop signal task, and engaged in a modified version of Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP) exercise, in which the outcome was used as a measure of direct physical aggression. We used a hierarchical, mixed-model multiple regression analysis test to examine the effects of emotion regulation and inhibitory control on physical reactive aggression. Results indicated an interaction between emotion regulation and inhibitory control on aggression. For participants with low inhibitory control only, there was a significant difference between high and low emotion regulation on aggression, such that low emotion regulation participants registered higher aggression than high emotion regulation participants. This difference was not found among participants with high inhibitory control. These results have implications for refining and targeting training and rehabilitation programs aimed at reducing aggressive behavior.

Influence of social factors on the relation between lie-telling and children’s cognitive abilities

Lie-telling may be part of a normative developmental process for children. However, little is known about the complex interaction of social and cognitive factors related to this developmental behavior. The current study examined parenting style, maternal exposure to stressors, and children’s cognitive abilities in relation to children’s antisocial lie-telling behavior in an experimental setting. Children (3–6years, N=157) participated in a modified temptation resistance paradigm to elicit spontaneous lies. Results indicate that high authoritative parenting and high inhibitory control interact to predict a lower propensity to lie, but those who did lie had better semantic leakage control. This suggests that although children’s lie-telling may be normative during early development, the relation to children’s cognitive abilities can be moderated by responsive parenting behaviors that discourage lying.

Behavioral and neural inhibitory control moderates the effects of reward sensitivity on adolescent substance use

The developmental period of adolescence is characterized by increasing incidence of health risk behaviors, including experimenting with drugs and alcohol. We examined how inhibitory control interacts with reward and punishment sensitivity to predict substance use severity and age of onset among early adolescents. The sample was comprised of 157 early adolescents (13–14 years of age, 52% male). Composite scores for behavioral activation system (BAS), behavioral inhibition system (BIS), and substance use severity and onset were computed using adolescents’ questionnaire data, and inhibitory control was assessed based on adolescents’ behavioral performance and brain imaging during the Multiple Source Interference Task (MSIT). Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that for both behavioral performance and neural activity indicators of inhibitory control, high levels of BAS predicted earlier onset of substance use among adolescents with low inhibitory control—but not among adolescents with high inhibitory control. BIS was not related to substance use severity and onset among adolescents. The results support the theoretically hypothesized moderating role of inhibitory control and its associated frontal cortex functioning, and offer new insights into the identification of adolescents with neurobehavioral vulnerabilities to developing maladaptive substance use behaviors.

Components of effortful control and their relations to children’s shyness

Relations between children’s (n = 213) mother-reported effortful control components (attention focusing, attention shifting, inhibitory control at 42 months; activational control at 72 months) and mother-reported shyness trajectories across 42, 54, 72, and 84 months of age were examined. In growth models, shyness decreased. Inhibitory control and attention shifting predicted higher levels and lower levels of shyness at 42 months (the intercept), respectively. Inhibitory control negatively, and attention shifting positively, predicted the shyness slope. Children with higher inhibitory control had relatively more rapid decreases in shyness. Children with higher attention shifting had relatively slower decreases in shyness. Activational control was negatively correlated with the shyness intercept. Effortful control components should be examined separately, rather than in combination, in relation to shyness in the future. If results are replicated, it may suggest that fostering attention shifting and activational control development helps prevent, or maintain low levels of, shyness during childhood.

Inhibitory control underlies individual differences in older adults' hindsight bias.

Outcome knowledge influences recall of earlier predictions of the event in question. Researchers have hypothesized that age-related declines in inhibitory control may underlie older adults' increased susceptibility to the two underlying bias processes that contribute to this hindsight bias (HB) phenomenon, recollection bias and reconstruction bias. Indeed, Coolin et al. (2015) found that older adults with lower inhibitory control were less likely to recall their earlier predictions in the presence of outcome knowledge (lower recollection ability) and were more likely to be biased by outcome knowledge when reconstructing their forgotten predictions (higher reconstruction bias) than those with higher inhibitory control. In the present study, we assess intraindividual differences in older adults' recollection and reconstruction processes using a within-subjects manipulation of inhibition. We tested 80 older adults (Mage = 71.40, range = 65 to 87) to assess whether (a) experimentally increasing inhibition burden via outcome rehearsal during the HB task impacts the underlying HB processes, and (b) the effects of this outcome rehearsal manipulation on the underlying HB processes vary with individual differences in cognitive abilities. Our findings revealed that outcome rehearsal increased recollection bias independently of individuals' cognitive abilities. Conversely, outcome rehearsal only increased reconstruction bias in individuals with higher inhibitory control, resulting in these individuals performing similarly to individuals with lower inhibitory control. These observations support the role of inhibitory control in older adults' HB and suggest that even individuals with higher inhibition ability are susceptible to HB when processing resources are limited. (PsycINFO Database Record

Preschoolers’ Inhibitory Control

Inhibitory control refers to the ability to resist distractions and exert self-control. Higher inhibitory control is associated with academic success and a healthy weight status among youth. Identifying other, health-related factors associated with inhibitory control is of value. Activity variables (such as physical activity [PA] and sleep) are associated with inhibitory control among adolescents and adults; less is known about these associations among preschool-aged children. PURPOSE: To examine associations among activity variables (PA and sleep duration) and pre-schoolers’ inhibitory control. METHODS: Sixty-four children (48% male; 75% Caucasian; mean [SD] age=4.3 [0.8] years; mean [SD] BMI percentile=61.4% [25.5]) wore an accelerometer for one week. Minutes per hour spent in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) were calculated. During the same week, participant’s parents reported the child’s sleep duration. Participants performed a computer task, which assessed inhibitory control. Response accuracy interference scores were calculated for the computer task, with higher interference scores indicating poorer inhibitory control. Regression models were used to examine associations among activity variables and interference scores. RESULTS: Regression models indicated a negative association between sleep duration and interference scores (R2=0.127, β=-.356, p=.01; n=58) and a positive association between MVPA and interference scores (R2=0.119, β=.344, p=.03; n=41). CONCLUSIONS: Consistent with previous findings, longer sleep duration was associated with better inhibitory control among young children. Contrary to observations among older youth and adults, higher PA was associated with poorer inhibitory control. It is plausible that among this age group, lower inhibitory control may result in a greater tendency to move, although the cross-sectional study design prohibits causal inference. Longitudinal research is needed to confirm or refute a causal relationship among these variables, and additional studies with larger, more diverse samples are needed to substantiate the findings. Funded by the North American Society for Pediatric Exercise Medicine

Is harsh caregiving effective in toddlers with low inhibitory control? An experimental study in the food domain

The aim of our study is to evaluate the validity of the “Caregiving×Temperament Paradigm” in the food domain. In this study, two prototypes of caregiving control have been contrasted: Harsh (forceful measures to curve the child’s behavior) versus Gentle control (supportive measures to direct the child’s behavior). In food domain, the most effective control to help a child to overcome initial dislike is repeated exposure. Our first objective was to test whether the repeated exposure displayed in a gentle context has a more benefical effect on dislike shifting than the one displayed in a harsh context. Our second objective was to assess whether this effect was moderated by a temperamental characteristic (child’s inhibitory control). A randomized experimental protocol was used in day care-centers, involving 98 children aged 21–41 months. Children were asked to consume an initially rejected target food on five occasions either with a Gentle or a Harsh instruction. Children’s dislike for the target food was assessed via intake before and after the familiarization phase. Inhibitory control level was measured in 78 of these children using validated questionnaire. Four groups were created: Instructions (Gentle vs Harsh)×Inhibitory control (Lower vs Higher). After the familiarization phase, the consumption of the target food increased in all groups, but with a higher increase in children with high Inhibitory control with Gentle instruction, than for children with low Inhibitory control with Harsh instruction, the two other groups being in between. Our data fit a model of cumulative effects, and show that both gentle control strategies and high inhibitory control in children contribute to regulate disgusts experienced in some feeding contexts.

The Role of Inhibitory Control in Second Language Phonological Processing

AbstractThis study investigated the role of inhibition in second language (L2) learners’ phonological processing. Participants were Spanish learners of L2 English and American learners of L2 Spanish. We measured inhibition through a retrieval‐induced inhibition task. Accuracy of phonological representations (perception and production) was assessed through a speeded ABX categorization task and a delayed sentence repetition task. We used a measure of L2 vocabulary size to tease out L2 proficiency effects. Higher inhibitory control was related to lower error rate in segmental perception. Inhibition was also related to consonant but not to vowel production accuracy. These results suggest a potential role for inhibition in L2 phonological acquisition, with inhibition enhancing the processing of phonologically relevant acoustic information in the L2 input, which in turn might lead to more accurate L2 phonological representations.Open PracticesThis article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. All materials are publicly accessible in the IRIS digital repository at http://www.iris‐database.org. Learnmore about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science:https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki

The effect of domain-general inhibition-related training on language switching: An ERP study

Previous studies have demonstrated that inhibitory control ability could be improved by training, and the Inhibitory Control (IC) Model implies that enhanced domain-general inhibition may elicit certain changes in language switch costs. In the present study, we aimed to examine the effects of domain-general inhibition training on performance in a language switching task, including which phase of domain-general inhibitory control benefits from training during an overt picture naming task in L1 and L2, using the event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Results showed that the language switch costs of bilinguals with high inhibitory control (high-IC) were symmetrical in both pretest and posttest, and those of bilinguals with low inhibitory control (low-IC) were asymmetrical in the pretest, but symmetrical in the posttest. Moreover, the high-IC group showed a larger LPC (late positive component) for L2 switch trials than for L1 trials in both pretest and posttest. In contrast, the low-IC group only exhibited a similar pattern of LPC in the posttest, but not in the pretest. These results indicate that inhibition training could increase the efficiency of language switching, and inhibitory control may play a key role during the lexical selection response phase. Overall, the present study is the first one to provide electrophysiological evidence for individual differences in the domain-general inhibition impact on language switching performance in low-proficient bilinguals.