title: Should I stop or should I go? The role of associations and expectancies.
abstract: Following exposure to consistent stimulus-stop mappings, response inhibition can become automatized with practice. What is learned is less clear, even though this has important theoretical and practical implications. A recent analysis indicates that stimuli can become associated with a stop signal or with a stop goal. Furthermore, expectancy may play an important role. Previous studies that have used stop or no-go signals to manipulate stimulus-stop learning cannot distinguish between stimulus-signal and stimulus-goal associations, and expectancy has not been measured properly. In the present study, participants performed a task that combined features of the go/no-go task and the stop-signal task in which the stop-signal rule changed at the beginning of each block. The go and stop signals were superimposed over 40 task-irrelevant images. Our results show that participants can learn direct associations between images and the stop goal without mediation via the stop signal. Exposure to the image-stop associations influenced task performance during training, and expectancies measured following task completion or measured within the task. But, despite this, we found an effect of stimulus-stop learning on test performance only when the task increased the task-relevance of the images. This could indicate that the influence of stimulus-stop learning on go performance is strongly influenced by attention to both task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimulus features. More generally, our findings suggest a strong interplay between automatic and controlled processes.
authors: Maisy
authors: M
authors: Best
authors: School of Psychology.
authors: Natalia S
authors: NS
authors: Lawrence
authors: Department of Psychology.
authors: Gordon D
authors: GD
authors: Logan
authors: School of Psychology.
authors: Ian P L
authors: IP
authors: McLaren
authors: School of Psychology.
authors: Frederick
authors: F
authors: Verbruggen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D002755:Choice Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult