title: Cognitive control reflects context monitoring, not motoric stopping, in response inhibition.
abstract: The inhibition of unwanted behaviors is considered an effortful and controlled ability. However, inhibition also requires the detection of contexts indicating that old behaviors may be inappropriate--in other words, inhibition requires the ability to monitor context in the service of goals, which we refer to as context-monitoring. Using behavioral, neuroimaging, electrophysiological and computational approaches, we tested whether motoric stopping per se is the cognitively-controlled process supporting response inhibition, or whether context-monitoring may fill this role. Our results demonstrate that inhibition does not require control mechanisms beyond those involved in context-monitoring, and that such control mechanisms are the same regardless of stopping demands. These results challenge dominant accounts of inhibitory control, which posit that motoric stopping is the cognitively-controlled process of response inhibition, and clarify emerging debates on the frontal substrates of response inhibition by replacing the centrality of controlled mechanisms for motoric stopping with context-monitoring.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America. chathach@gmail.com
authors.forename: Christopher H
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Chatham
authors.forename: Eric D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Claus
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Curran
authors.forename: Marie T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Banich
authors.forename: Yuko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Munakata
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001519:Behavior; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D003071:Cognition; D004594:Electrophysiology / Q000379:methods; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D059906:Neuroimaging; D011680:Pupil / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology