Stopping at a red light: Recruitment of inhibitory control by environmental cues

Abstract

Environmental cues can influence basic perceptual and attentional processes especially in an emotional context. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the effect of a non-emotional common environmental cue―a traffic light—on a higher cognitive operation―inhibition. In two experiments, we administered a novel version of the stop-signal task, in which the go task was to determine the color of a traffic light. In order to investigate the influence of each of the cues on inhibitory processes, separate tracking procedures (one for each cue) were applied simultaneously to the stop-signal delay. In Experiment 1, we found that reaction time in no-stop-signal trials was faster when a green traffic light was present, whereas stop-signal reaction time was longer when a red traffic light was present. In Experiment 2, neutral control cues were used in addition to a red and green light. The results indicate that the differences between red and green stem from an association between the color red and stop processes (rather than from the green-go association). These results strengthen previous findings showing the effect of environmental cues on attentional processes and go beyond them by showing that the effect is not restricted to emotional cues. Most importantly, the current study results suggest that environmental cues can also influence complex cognitive operations such as inhibitory control. These results might have specific implications for our understanding of the processes that underlie specific psychiatric disorders characterized by inhibitory deficit.

Demonstrating and disrupting well-learned habits

“…Importantly, our results suggest that responses are more outcome-insensitive (i.e., habitual) when the stimulus meanings are congruent with our experiences in daily life (e.g., when a traffic light indicating "stop" is red, rather than green, blue or purple). This finding is in line with a previous report of improved inhibitory performance when the stop-signal is red compared to green [22], which provides further support to the notion that an environmentally congruent cue can substantially affect action execution. However, the incongruency-related changes alone are not enough to conclude that a response is habitual; rather this conclusion must be verified by a comparison of the habitual associations (i.e., green-go, red-stop) with the novel control condition Go/NoGo associations (i.e., purple-go, blue-stop).…”

“…However, in Experiment 1, green-NoGo accuracy was comparable to that of blue-NoGo or purple-NoGo mappings. A similar pattern has been documented in previous research: Hochman et al found that better stop-signal task performance using red and green light stimuli was primarily driven by a red-stop association as opposed to a green-go association [22]. In light of this report, it could be the case that a green-NoGo impairment is more difficult to detect than the advantage a red-stop association may elicit.…”

“…Many have used these colors as Go or NoGo signals that are intuitive to the participant (which we believe further speaks to the notion that these stimuli indeed hold real-world meaning) [19][20][21]. A study has even investigated whether green and red signals facilitate go and stop behaviors in a stop-signal task and found supporting evidence for the effect of environmental familiarity and inhibitory control [22]. However, ours is the first study that examines these familiarities in the perspective of habits and goals.…”

“…For instance, the colors red and green have highly specific "stop" and "go" associations, possibly strengthened in a variety of contexts including traffic lights, visual signals of danger and safety, and childhood games, songs, and stories [19]. The familiar red-stop and green-go contingencies have previously been transformed into Go/NoGo and stop-signal tasks to assess response inhibition via perseverative errors (i.e., NoGo accuracy) [19][20][21][22]. Similarly, we can test for behavioral rigidity by assessing performance when these contingencies are congruent with daily experiences versus when adjusted to reflect outcomes incongruent with most real-world scenarios.…”

The Impact of Stimuli Color in Lexical Decision and Semantic Word Categorization Tasks

“…The studies assessing the impact of primary colors-red versus green (or vs. blue) on performance (for a review, see Elliot, 2015)-have also included indicators of motor (e.g., Elliot & Aarts, 2011;Elliot, Maier, Binser, Friedman, & Pekrun, 2009;Meier, D'Agostino, Elliot, Maier, & Wilkowski, 2012;Payen et al, 2011) and cognitive performance, namely attention (Hochman, Henik, & Kalanthroff, 2018), information processing (Soldat, Sinclair, & Mark, 1997), and memory (for a review, see Dzulkifli & Mustafar, 2013). The pattern of findings obtained was not clear-cut: Some studies have found that red (vs. blue or green) inhibits performance, whereas others show that it facilitates it (for a review, see Mehta & Zhu, 2009).…”