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Reliable estimation of inhibitory efficiency: to anticipate, choose or simply react?
Author(s) -
Leunissen Inge,
Zandbelt Bram B.,
Potocanac Zrinka,
Swinnen Stephan P.,
Coxon James P.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.13590
Subject(s) - unobservable , skew , stop signal , computer science , signal (programming language) , response inhibition , latency (audio) , task (project management) , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , cognition , econometrics , psychology , mathematics , engineering , telecommunications , programming language , systems engineering
Response inhibition is an important executive process studied by clinical and experimental psychologists, neurophysiologists and cognitive neuroscientists alike. Stop‐signal paradigms are popular because they are grounded in a theory that provides methods to estimate the latency of an unobservable process: the stop‐signal reaction time ( SSRT ). Critically, SSRT estimates can be biased by skew of the response time distribution and gradual slowing over the course of the experiment. Here, we present a series of experiments that directly compare three common stop‐signal paradigms that differ in the distribution of response times. The results show that the widely used choice response ( CR ) and simple response ( SR ) time versions of the stop‐signal paradigm are particularly susceptible to skew of the response time distribution and response slowing, and that using the anticipated response ( AR ) paradigm based on the Slater‐Hammel task offers a viable alternative to obtain more reliable SSRT estimates.