Switch costs in inhibitory control and voluntary behaviour: A computational study of the antisaccade task

Abstract

An integral aspect of human cognition is the ability to inhibit stimulus‐driven, habitual responses, in favour of complex, voluntary actions. In addition, humans can also alternate between different tasks. This comes at the cost of degraded performance when compared to repeating the same task, a phenomenon called the “task‐switch cost.” While task switching and inhibitory control have been studied extensively, the interaction between them has received relatively little attention. Here, we used the SERIA model, a computational model of antisaccade behaviour, to draw a bridge between them. We investigated task switching in two versions of the mixed antisaccade task, in which participants are cued to saccade either in the same or in the opposite direction to a peripheral stimulus. SERIA revealed that stopping a habitual action leads to increased inhibitory control that persists onto the next trial, independently of the upcoming trial type. Moreover, switching between tasks induces slower and less accurate voluntary responses compared to repeat trials. However, this only occurs when participants lack the time to prepare the correct response. Altogether, SERIA demonstrates that there is a reconfiguration cost associated with switching between voluntary actions. In addition, the enhanced inhibition that follows antisaccade but not prosaccade trials explains asymmetric switch costs. In conclusion, SERIA offers a novel model of task switching that unifies previous theoretical accounts by distinguishing between inhibitory control and voluntary action generation and could help explain similar phenomena in paradigms beyond the antisaccade task.

Aging Effects and Test–Retest Reliability of Inhibitory Control for Saccadic Eye Movements

“…To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to apply these computational models to investigating age differences and probe their test-retest reliability. These computational models extend the current understanding of processes that contribute to changes in reaction times and error rate and suggest that the changes can best be explained by faster or slower inhibition (Aponte et al, 2019). We used the PROSA and SERIA models (Aponte et al, 2017) to estimate latent processes that were not directly observable.…”

“…Our results also revealed more inhibition failures, fast, reflexive prosaccades on prosaccade trials and errors on antisaccade trials, and late saccades. Late responses can trigger prosaccade and antisaccades with a certain probability (Aponte et al, 2017(Aponte et al, , 2019, higher for older adults than for younger adults. This is a further indicator of a reduction in inhibitory control in older adults (Sweeney et al, 2001).…”

“…Additionally, we used a probabilistic computational model to study the antisaccade task, referred to as the Stochastic Early Reaction, Inhibition, and Late Action (SERIA) model (Aponte et al, 2017), which links the concept of competing early processes (Logan et al, 1984;Camalier et al, 2007) with two voluntary actions that generate late prosaccade and antisaccade. This formal probabilistic approach enabled us to analyze the metrics not detectable by error rates and reaction time measures, especially inhibition failures, which are fast, reflexive prosaccades, which would be correct on prosaccade trials and errors on antisaccade trials (Aponte et al, 2019).…”

TAPAS: an open-source software package for Translational Neuromodeling and Computational Psychiatry

“…The AS task asks participants to perform antisaccades which are a type of voluntarily controlled eye movements. In TAPAS, code is available to run two different versions of the AS task (Aponte et al, 2019;2018) using an EyeLink (SR Research, Ottawa, ON, Canada) eye tracking system. The versions of the task differ in the timing (with or without a delay before the eye movement) and position (at center or at peripheral target position) of the presentation of the task cue.…”

Computational dissociation of dopaminergic and cholinergic effects on action selection and inhibitory control

“…To address these questions, we performed two twin experiments following a double-blind, placebo-controlled, between-group design. To uncover the effects of levodopa and galantamine on antisaccades, we used the Stochastic Early Reaction, Inhibition and late Action (SERIA) model (38–40), a recent computational model of antisaccade mechanisms that quantifies the contribution of inhibitory control and action selection to ER and RT. In addition, we investigated whether the parameters inferred by the model were predictive of the drug administered to individual participants.…”