Influence of response prepotency strength, general working memory resources, and specific working memory load on the ability to inhibit predominant responses: A comparison of young and elderly participants

Abstract

Allée du 6 août n°8, Bât B30, B-4000 Liège, Belgium, Phone: 0032 4 366 54 75, Fax: 0032 4 366 29 46, Email: julien.grandjean@ulg.ac.be Grandjean J., Collette F. Influence of response prepotency strength, general working memory resources, and specific working memory load on the ability to inhibit predominant responses: A comparison of young and elderly participants. Brain and Cognition (in press). 2 AbstractOne conception of inhibitory functioning suggests that the ability to successfully inhibit a predominant response depends mainly on the strength of that response, the general functioning of working memory processes, and the working memory demand of the task (Roberts, Hager, and Heron, 1994). The proposal that inhibition and functional working memory capacity interact was assessed in the present study using two motor inhibition tasks (Go/No-Go and response incompatibility) in young and older participants. The strength of prepotency was assessed with a short or long training phase for the response to be inhibited. The influence of working memory resources was evaluated by administering the tasks in full versus divided attention conditions. The effect of working memory load was manipulated by increasing the number of target and distracter items in each task. Results showed no effect of prepotency strength, whereas dividing attentional resources and increasing working memory load were associated with greater inhibitory effects in both groups and for both tasks. This deleterious effect was higher for older participants, except in the working memory load condition of the Go/No-Go task. These results suggest an interactive link between working memory and response inhibition by showing that taxing working memory resources increases the difficulty of inhibiting prepotent responses in younger and older subjects. The additional detrimental effect of these factors on healthy elderly subjects was related to their decreased cognitive resources and to their shorter span size.

Intentional and Reactive Inhibition During Spoken-Word Stroop Task Performance in People With Aphasia

“…That is, there are individual differences in inhibitory function related to the availability of cognitive resources (i.e., attention) for working memory. The greater the working memory capacity, the greater the inhibitory function (Grandjean & Collette, 2011;Kane & Engle, 2003). These findings augment the previous reports of Jonides and Nee (2006), who explored the neural mechanisms involved in intentional inhibition and its connection to working memory.…”

Individual differences in the gesture effect on working memory

“…2 Differences between gesture and no-gesture conditions for low and high working memory capacity groups. Gesture score refers to the average proportion of the maximum possible remembered letters across conditions load is increased (Grandjean & Collette, 2011;Hester & Garavan, 2005;Lawrence, Myerson, & Abrams, 2004;Mitchell, Macrae, & Gilchrist, 2002;Theeuwes, Belopolsky, & Olivers, 2009). Taken together, these findings suggest that gestures interact with the executive control of attention, rather than the encoding or maintenance of information.…”

Les modifications du fonctionnement exécutif dans le vieillissement normal

“…Dans une autre étude portant plus spécifiquement sur le fonctionnement inhibiteur, nous avons tenté de déterminer si les capacités de mémoire de travail influencent l'efficacité du processus d'inhibition motrice lors du vieillissement normal (Grandjean & Collette, 2011b). Nous nous sommes basés sur la proposition de Roberts et collaborateurs (Roberts, Hager, & Heron, 1994) qui considèrent que la capacité d'inhiber une réponse prédominante dépend conjointement de la force de l'automatisme à inhiber, des ressources de traitement disponibles en mémoire de travail et de la charge en mémoire de travail imposée par la tâche en cours.…”