title: The error protection impact of inhibitory after-effects in a location-based task and its preservation with practice.
abstract: In location-based tasks, responses related to (prime trial) distractor-occupied locations automatically undergo activation, followed by inhibition, which causes these responses to become execution-resistant (ER). Distractor-response ER takes time to override, delaying target reactions that later require this response (e.g., probe, ignored-repetition trials), causing the spatial negative priming (SNP) phenomenon. We learned in this study that distractor-response ER affords this output a degree of error protection. Specifically, when the probe target appeared at a new location, former (prime) distractor responses were used erroneously significantly less often than their control response counterparts, likely due to their ER feature, which discourages their inappropriate selection (i.e., "ER" provides error protection). This error protection also was evident when a previous distractor response was activated by a distractor on the probe (i.e., distractor-repeat trial). Notably, error protection remained effective over extensive practice, as did SNP size (i.e., ER override time) after an initial decline.
authors.affiliation: The Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Western Ontario, Thames Hall 4150, London, Canada, ebuckolz@uwo.ca.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Buckolz
authors.forename: Alexandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Stoddart
authors.forename: Cameron
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Edgar
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Khan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005260:Female; D005366:Figural Aftereffect / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D060865:Repetition Priming / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult