Understanding Early Inhibitory Development: Distinguishing Two Ways That Children Use Inhibitory Control

Abstract

Inhibitory control is the capacity to suppress inappropriate responses. It is central to many aspects of development, most notably executive function and effortful control. Despite its importance, however, there are significant gaps in our understanding of inhibitory control's early development, and several findings that remain hard to explain. Here, a new account of inhibitory control is presented, explaining previous findings by distinguishing between two distinct ways that inhibitory control is used. According to this "Strength/Endurance" account, inappropriate responses which are highly prepotent tax inhibitory strength; whereas inappropriate responses which remain active for a long time tax inhibitory endurance. The developmental trajectories of these two aspects of inhibitory control, and their separate impacts on broader development, are discussed.

Advancing the understanding of individual differences in attentional control: Theoretical, methodological, and analytical considerations

“…However, as our survey of existing individual differences studies revealed, even where tasks are assumed to involve execution of the same mechanismssuch as the Stroop and the Simon task, or even different variations of the Stroop taskcorrelations between task congruency effects can be small, suggesting that our conception of the mechanisms involved may not be accurate. Thus, the conceptual frameworks that researchers are operating from may need further refinement (e.g., see Simpson & Carroll, 2019) or even rethinking (Doebel, 2020). Future research would further benefit from formalizing theoretical assumptions as parameters in computational models to provide more precise and falsifiable predictions.…”

Stroop interference is a composite phenomenon: Evidence from distinct developmental trajectories of its components

“…These findings are broadly consistent with the lack of semantic conflict observed in younger children in Experiment 2 of the present study. A more detailed theoretical treatment of these ideas has been made recently in Simpson and Carroll ().…”

Inhibitory control moderates the relation between advertising literacy activation and advertising susceptibility

“…At this moment, there are simple ways for parents, educators, and other caregivers to assess children's inhibitory control (for examples, see Simpson & Carroll, 2019). Inhibitory control could be improved with training programs in schools (e.g., mindfulness programs, Razza, Bergen-Cico, & Raymond, 2015;Schonert-Reichl et al, 2015), in addition to advertising literacy programs.…”

“…As children grown older (including moving into adolescence) their brain is becoming increasingly efficient at inhibiting responses. This is, for instance, shown by the fact that as children grow older they cannot only inhibit a response prior to its initiation, but also inhibit a response that has already begun (Simpson & Carroll, 2019;Tamm et al, 2002). Additionally, children get increasingly better at suppressing impulsive actions (Diamond, 2013).…”