Inhibitory control

Control over prepotent or competing responses. Its operation is task-dependent: following an opposite tapping rule and suppressing irrelevant numerical information share a broad control demand but include different perceptual, linguistic and domain-specific processes.

Response inhibition is the suppression or cancellation of an action that would otherwise be made. It is one aspect of inhibitory control. For example, in a stop-signal task a person prepares a button press in response to a go cue, but occasionally receives a later signal to stop. Successful stopping requires a change to an already prepared response.

The delay between go and stop signals matters: a very late stop signal leaves less opportunity for cancellation. Models use performance across delays to estimate stop-signal reaction time, rather than directly timing an invisible mental event. Brain lesion studies can test whether damage to a region is associated with impaired stopping, while interpretation still depends on task demands and the measurement model.^[ref]

Control of the influence of an observed action when a different action is required. It can be studied through compatible/incompatible response tasks with separate controls for spatial interference.

A task in which an occasional signal instructs cancellation of an otherwise required response. Successful performance requires detection and interpretation of the signal as well as stopping.

A model-derived estimate of the latency of stopping. It is not directly observed as a movement time, and its interpretation depends on assumptions about the go and stop processes.

An experimenter taps once or twice and the child must produce the opposite count. The task taxes inhibition of imitation together with maintenance of the response rule; its score is not a process-pure measure.^[ref]