An inhibitory control test measures an individual's ability to override their natural, habitual, or dominant behavioral response (sometimes called a "prepotent response") to a stimulus in order to implement more adaptive goal-oriented behaviors. In simple terms, inhibitory control (also known as response inhibition) is the process of altering one's learned behavioral responses in a way that makes it easier to complete a particular goal. Self-control is an important aspect of inhibitory control.
Contents
Inhibitory control is a key component of cognitive control; inhibitory control is impaired in both addiction and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In healthy adults and ADHD individuals, inhibitory control improves over the short term with low (therapeutic) doses of methylphenidate or amphetamine. Inhibitory control may also be improved over the long-term via consistent aerobic exercise.
The prefrontal cortex, caudate nucleus, and subthalamic nucleus mediate aspects of inhibitory control.
Females tend to have a greater basal capacity to exert inhibitory control over undesired or habitual behaviors than males and respond differently to modulatory environmental contextual factors. For example, listening to music tends to significantly improve the rate of response inhibition in females, but reduce the rate of response inhibition in males.
Tests
Psychological tests which measure inhibitory control include the Stroop task, go/no-go task, Simon task, Flanker task, antisaccade tasks, delay of gratification tasks, and stop-signal tasks.
Research
Jenkins & Berthier (2014) conducted a study on working memory and inhibitory response in toddlers. The toddlers that participated were between the ages of two and three years of age. Thirty six children were recruited, twenty of them were males and sixteen were females; most of the children were closer to 3 years of age (34 months). The way these subjects were recruited was via telephone calls and letters from birth state records that were found. The purpose of this study was to determine which type of test helped increase memory retention in toddlers. There were four types of test, the door task, three boxes-stationary task, three boxes scrambled, and the three pegs task. Three of these tests were working memory tasks and one was an inhibitory/cognitive control test. The first test that was given was the door task; in this task children were asked to sit in front of an item or electronic device that consisted of a pathway where balls could be rolled down into different slots. A barrier was included to mislead the child and test the memory of what slot the ball went into. They were then instructed to search or point at where the hidden ball had landed. The second test was called three boxes stationary task. This test asked the participants to select a box of their choice that contained certain treats. The child kept getting distracted as the researcher pulled away the boxes and brought them back to his/her attention to choose the right box where the treat was in; along with this test the child was provided with feedback. The third test was similar to the second test; the only difference was that the boxes were scrambled. The last test consisted of a three peg task, this measured inhibitory control, in this test children were asked to identify pegs. The results of this study found that the inhibitory control test was the most effective in allowing the child to remember things. The improvements were found due to an increase in attention and reaction time. Most of these tasks involved analyzing a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex.