title: Do emotional stimuli interfere with two distinct components of inhibition?
abstract: Emotions have recently been shown to interfere with the efficacy of inhibitory control. However, understanding their impact requires taking into account that inhibition is not a unitary construct, but consists of distinct functions underlain by specific mechanisms. In this study, 88 participants performed two emotional versions of classic laboratory tasks designed to assess (1) the ability to inhibit a prepotent response (a stop-signal task using faces with different emotional expressions) and (2) the capacity to resist the effect of proactive interference (PI; a recent negative task that included emotional words). Overall results showed that emotional stimuli interfered with inhibition capacities in both tasks. Although tending in the same direction, these results suggest that different underlying mechanisms (e.g., top-down vs. bottom-up processes) or consecutive differences in emotional processing (e.g., different interactions with stimulus/task properties, processing stages or motivational aspects) are at play in these two inhibition-related functions.
authors.affiliation: a Cognitive Psychopathology and Neuropsychology Unit , University of Geneva , Geneva , Switzerland.
authors.forename: Marie My Lien
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Rebetez
authors.forename: Lucien
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rochat
authors.forename: Joël
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Billieux
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gay
authors.forename: Martial
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Van der Linden
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotion; Executive functions; Prepotent response inhibition; Proactive interference