Strategies, context, and the mechanism of response inhibition

Abstract

A series of four experiments investigated Neill's (1977) claim that there are inhibitory mechanisms in selective attention. It was demonstrated that the evidence supporting the inhibitory theory, namely, the diminished availability of distractor responses during a discretetrials version of the Stroop task is complicated by a number of strategic adaptations to various contingencies within the trial sequence. These results do not support a simple interpretation of response inhibition during the Stroop task.

Distractors of low activation can produce negative priming

“…Color naming was slower when the name of the color was the to-be-ignored word in the preceding trial than when the name was irrelevant. Lowe (1979) replicated this finding and also demonstrated the importance of the presence of a probe distractor. In labeling this phenomenon of delayed target processing by its previous role, negative priming, Tipper (1985) set a milestone for the advancement of research on inhibition in selective attention.…”

Attentional distribution in the visual field duringsame-different judgments as assessed by response competition

“…There is a growing body of experimental evidence showing the role of inhibition in stimulus processing and stimulus selection (see, e.g., Allport, Tipper, & Chmiel, 1985;Dalrymple-Alford & Budayr, 1966;Lowe, 1979Lowe, , 1985Neill, 1977;Neill & Westberry, 1987;Tipper, 1985;Tipper, MacQueen, & Brehaut, 1988). Neill (1991) has presented an excellent summary of the research in this area and traced out some of its theoretical implications.…”

Threat processing in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Evidence from a modified negative priming task

“…However, disagreements over interpretation of the finding persist (e.g., Frings & Wentura, 2006;MacLeod, Chiappe, & Fox, 2002;Tipper, 2001). Theories attempting to explain NP include: selective inhibition (e.g., Houghton & Tipper, 1994); feature mismatch (Lowe, 1979;Milliken, Tipper, & Weaver, 1994;Park & Kanwisher;; episodic retrieval Neill, Valdes, Terry, & Gorfein, 1992;Rothermund, Wentura, & De Houwer, 2005); and temporal discrimination (Milliken, Joordens, Merikle, & Seiffert, 1998). The selective inhibition and episodic retrieval accounts have received the most support.…”

“…One reliable finding in the NP literature is that the presence of distracter stimuli in the probe display influences whether participants display positive or negative priming. Healthy populations typically exhibit no NP or positive priming in NP paradigms that employ probe displays with no distracter stimuli (i.e., non-conflict displays; Allport, Tipper, & Chmiel, 1985, Experiment 9;Frings & Wentura, 2006, Experiments 1A and 1B;Lowe, 1979;Milliken et al, 1998, Experiment 1B;Moore, 1994;Neill & Westberry, 1987;Tipper, Brehaut, & Driver, 1990, Experiment 5;Tipper & Cranston, 1985, Experiment 3;for review, see Fox, 1995;but see Yee 1991;Fox, 1994). Frings and Wentura (2006) examined the critical feature of NP paradigms with non-conflict probe displays by reducing the extent to which participants could learn the contingency between prime and probe displays.…”