Motivating inhibition – reward prospect speeds up response cancellation

• Published in: Cognition Vol. 125; no. 3; pp. 498 - 503
• Main Authors: Boehler, Carsten N., Hopf, Jens-Max, Stoppel, Christian M., Krebs, Ruth M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.12.2012; Elsevier
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Adult; Behavioural sciences; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognitive Ability; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Inhibition; Inhibition (Psychology); Male; Motivation; Motor Reactions; Patients; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor Performance; Psychomotor Skills; Reaction Time; Response inhibition; Responses; Reward; Rewards; Stop-signal response time; Stop-signal task; Task Analysis; Response inhibition; Reward; Motivation; Stop-signal response time; Stop-signal task; Human; Response time; Choice reaction time; Cognition; Inhibition; Experimental study; Velocity
• ISSN: 0010-0277; 1873-7838
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.07.018

Reward prospect has been demonstrated to facilitate various cognitive and behavioral operations, particularly by enhancing the speed and vigor of processes linked to approaching reward. Studies in this domain typically employed task regimes in which participants’ overt responses are facilitated by prospective rewards. In contrast, we demonstrate here that even the cancellation of a motor response can be accelerated by reward prospect, thus signifying reward-related benefits on restraint rather than approach behavior. Importantly, this facilitation occurred independent of strategy-related adjustments of response speed, which are known to systematically distort the estimation of response-cancellation speed. The fact that motivational factors can indeed facilitate response inhibition is not only relevant for understanding how motivation and response inhibition interact in healthy participants but also for work on various patient groups that display response-inhibition deficits, suggesting that core differences in the ability to inhibit motor responses have to be differentiated from motivational factors.