Dissociable Components of Cognitive Control: An Event-Related Potential (ERP) Study of Response Inhibition and Interference Suppression
et al. (2012) Dissociable Components of Cognitive Control: An Event-Related Potential (ERP)
Study of Response Inhibition and Interference Suppression. PLoS ONE 7(3): e34482. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034482
Dissociable Components of Cognitive Control: An Event- Related Potential (ERP) Study of Response Inhibition and Interference Suppression
Christopher R. Brydges 0
Karen Clunies-Ross 0
Madeleine Clohessy 0
Zhao Li Lo 0
An Nguyen 0
Claire Rousset 0
Patrick Whitelaw 0
Yit Jing Yeap 0
Allison M. Fox 0
Pedro Antonio Valdes-Sosa, Cuban Neuroscience Center, Cuba
0 1 School of Psychology, University of Western Australia , Perth , Australia , 2 Neurocognitive Development Unit, University of Western Australia , Perth , Australia
Background: Cognitive control refers to the ability to selectively attend and respond to task-relevant events while resisting interference from distracting stimuli or prepotent automatic responses. The current study aimed to determine whether interference suppression and response inhibition are separable component processes of cognitive control. Methodology/Principal Findings: Fourteen young adults completed a hybrid Go/Nogo flanker task and continuous EEG data were recorded concurrently. The incongruous flanker condition (that required interference suppression) elicited a more centrally distributed topography with a later N2 peak than the Nogo condition (that required response inhibition). Conclusions/Significance: These results provide evidence for the dissociability of interference suppression and response inhibition, indicating that taxonomy of inhibition is warranted with the integration of research evidence from neuroscience.
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Funding: Funding support was provided for equipment by the Australian Research Council DP0665616 (http://www.arc.gov.au/) and the School of Psychology,
University of Western Australia. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Cognitive control refers to the ability to selectively attend and
respond to task-relevant events while resisting interference from
distracting stimuli or prepotent automatic responses [1,2]. Interest
in the study of inhibitory processes has increased in the past two
decades [3], reflecting the importance of inhibition in everyday
cognition, and, ultimately, for successful living [4]. More recently,
associations between inhibition and other executive functions,
particularly updating and shifting have been studied in more depth
[5,6]. Despite a growing amount of research interest in the area
[7,8], there is still considerable debate as to the separability of the
subprocesses of inhibition. Several theorists have proposed that,
from a behavioural perspective, inhibition should be viewed as a
group of separable, yet related, subprocesses [9,10,11].
Nigg proposed that there are four types of inhibition in cognitive
psychology [11]; however, the present study focuses on only two of
these: response inhibition, which involves the suppression of
prepotent behavioural responses (as is required in a Go/Nogo
task), and interference suppression, which is the active prevention
of interference due to stimulus competition (such as that observed
in a flanker task). Van Boxtel, van der Molen, Jennings, and
Brunia [12] proposed an alternate, but not necessarily conflicting
theory of inhibitory processing, where inhibition is classified as
selective (i.e. an event in which a response has to be made, but is
not prepotent) or nonselective, when no response is required [12].
This theory may be considered parallel to Niggs taxonomy, as
many tasks thought to measure response inhibition (such as Go/
Nogo and stop-signal tasks) require nonselective inhibition, whereas
tasks requiring interference suppression (such as Stroop and flanker
tasks) require selective inhibition. However, a key difference
between these processes is the time required for each process to
be completed, as it is reasoned that selective inhibition takes longer
due to it requiring discrimination; that is, on a forced-choice task, a
choice still has to be made [13]. Although other prominent theories
of inhibition [9,10] use different terminology, they each converge
upon the theory that inhibition refers to several related yet distinct
processes, as opposed to a unitary construct.
Evidence from a variety of perspectives has been put forward in
support of a unitary view of inhibition. From a behavioural
perspective, Friedman and Miyake created latent variables of
prepotent response inhibition and resistance to distracter
interference and reported that that model fit was not significantly worse
when the two variables were collapsed into one [8]. Verbruggen,
Liefooghe, and Vandierendock used a combined
flanker/stopsignal task to determine whether there was overlap between the
processes of response inhibition and interference sup (...truncated)