Validation of an emotional stop-signal task to probe individual differences in emotional response inhibition: Relationships with positive and negative urgency

Abstract

Performance on an emotional stop-signal task designed to assess emotional response inhibition has been associated with Negative Urgency and psychopathology, particularly self-injurious behaviors. Indeed, difficulty inhibiting prepotent negative responses to aversive stimuli on the emotional stop-signal task (i.e. poor negative emotional response inhibition) partially explains the association between Negative Urgency and non-suicidal self-injury. Here, we combine existing data sets from clinical (hospitalised psychiatric inpatients) and non-clinical (community/student participants) samples aged 18–65 years ( N = 450) to examine the psychometric properties of this behavioural task and evaluate hypotheses that emotional stop-signal task metrics relate to distinct impulsive traits among participants who also completed the UPPS-P ( n = 223). We specifically predicted associations between worse negative emotional response inhibition (i.e. commission errors during stop-signal trials representing negative reactions to unpleasant images) and Negative Urgency, whereas commission errors to positive stimuli – reflecting worse positive emotional response inhibition – would relate to Positive Urgency. Results support the emotional stop-signal task’s convergent and discriminant validity: as hypothesised, poor negative emotional response inhibition was specifically associated with Negative Urgency and no other impulsive traits on the UPPS-P. However, we did not find the hypothesised association between positive emotional response inhibition and Positive Urgency. Correlations between emotional stop-signal task performance and self-report measures were the modest, similar to other behavioural tasks. Participants who completed the emotional stop-signal task twice ( n = 61) additionally provide preliminary evidence for test–retest reliability. Together, findings suggest adequate reliability and validity of the emotional stop-signal task to derive candidate behavioural markers of neurocognitive functioning associated with Negative Urgency and psychopathology.

Modeling urgency in the lab: Exploring the associations between self-reported urgency and behavioral responses to negative outcomes in laboratory gambling

“…Another recent study by Roxburgh et al (2022) found that negative urgency was associated with impaired response inhibition (again, indexed by longer SSRTs) in a threatening condition (induced by threat of shock), but not in a non-threatening condition. Taken together, these studies suggest that there is a relationship between high scores on the (negative) urgency scale and difficulties in inhibiting prepotent responses, but this relationship might be context dependent (as indicated by the results of studies by Allen et al, 2021, andRoxburgh et al, 2022). By contrast, other studies observed only weak or no relationships between performance in behavioral tasks measuring response inhibition and self-report measures such as the UPPS-P (Creswell et al, 2019;Cyders & Coskunpinar, 2011Reynolds et al, 2006;Schluter et al, 2018;Sharma et al, 2014).…”

“…Similarly, Gay et al (2008) found a positive correlation between the number of commission errors in a go/no-go task (again, indicating poorer inhibition) and negative urgency. More recently, Allen et al (2021) also found a relationship between negative urgency and negative emotional response inhibition measured in an emotional stop-signal task: participants who scored high on the factor negative urgency in the UPPS-P also had more difficulty in inhibiting their responses to negative emotional stimuli. In this study, no correlation was found for inhibition of responses toward positive emotional stimuli and positive urgency.…”

“…Recently, efforts have been made to identify a state measure of urgency as one facet of impulsivity and how trait and state measures might be related. Earlier studies suggested a potential relationship between negative urgency as a specific dimension of the UPPS-P and difficulty in inhibiting prepotent responses (which is typically seen as "impulsive action" in the literature; e.g., Bari & Robbins, 2013) in lab-based tests (Allen et al, 2021;Billieux, Lagrange, et al, 2012;Johnson et al, 2016;Wilbertz et al, 2014). For example, Wilbertz et al (2014) found a positive correlation between stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) and urgency in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study showing that individuals who scored higher on the urgency scale had longer SSRTs (i.e., poorer response inhibition).…”

“…However, some researchers have developed state measures for impulsivity as well, which are typically investigated in laboratory tasks. The results of investigations into the relationship between trait and state measures are mixed, but typically point in the direction of low correlations between trait and state impulsivity (Allen et al, 2021;Gay et al, 2008;Roxburgh et al, 2022;Wilbertz et al, 2014). In the present study, we explored whether negative urgency as a measure of impulsivity relates to a potential behavioral measure of urgency ("state" measure).…”

Editorial: an emerging field with bright prospects

“…Often, we look for individual differences in performance on a task that was basically designed to elicit a typical response and which have become popular precisely because between-subject variability is low (e.g., the stop signal task; Hedge, Powell, & Sumner, 2018). It is much harder to develop approaches de novo that are aimed squarely at having good psychometric properties for individual differences research, although some attempts have been made (e.g., Allen et al, 2021, with the emotional signal task). This problem is confounded further by modelling and statistical issues.…”