The Right Tool for the Job: Tailoring Inhibition Training in Children

• In Event: 3-132 - Cognitive Control in Childhood and Adolescence: Tracking Neural Development and Testing Novel Interventions

Integrative Statement

Children experience notorious difficulties inhibiting inappropriate behaviors. One possible cause of these difficulties is that inhibition requires not only motoric-stopping, but also context monitoring (i.e. the ability to detect environmental signals requiring a change of action). Children appear to show greater improvements in inhibitory control after practice with context monitoring versus motoric-stopping (Chevalier et al., 2014), but these processes have not been fully disentangled in prior work. Delineating the precise roles of context monitoring and motoric-stopping in inhibitory control will advance our understanding of developmental changes in inhibitory control and how to optimize interventions.
Utilizing a training approach with 7-8 year-old children, we assessed separate and joint effects of motoric-stopping and context monitoring processes on performance on a Stop Signal Task. Training manipulated whether children received practice stopping (in a motoric stopping vs. a non-stopping, double-go condition) or practice monitoring (in a high vs. low demand condition to detect signals), in a 2x2 between-subjects factorial design. We hypothesized that training in stopping or monitoring would each benefit response inhibition at test - but not necessarily in the same way. We estimated children's stop signal reaction time (SSRT) distributions, including mode, skew, and dispersion, in addition to the standard calculation of mean SSRT.
Consistent with our hypotheses, stopping and monitoring training had unique influences on children's response inhibition. Training in stopping led to less dispersed and less skewed SSRTs, while training in monitoring led to less dispersed SSRTs with no effect on skew (Fig. 1). Therefore, children produced more consistent patterns of response inhibition at test after practice with either stopping or monitoring - highlighting the importance of processes beyond just motoric-stopping to inhibition. While neither stopping nor monitoring training alone increased speed of stopping, children showed the fastest modal SSRT after training with monitoring and a non-stopping action (replicating Chevalier et al., 2014). That is, children showed the fastest inhibitory control after training to detect and respond to environmental signals. The absence of a difficult stopping demand could have allowed these children to focus fully on context monitoring, providing them with more effective practice monitoring for environmental signals and thus increased speed in stopping at test.
Together these results suggest that both motoric-stopping and context monitoring are important components of children's developing inhibitory control, and these processes can be trained to yield common and unique benefits. Consistency of inhibition is facilitated by practice with either motoric-stopping or context monitoring, while speed of inhibition may be best supported by training that allows children to focus specifically on context monitoring. Understanding these distinct profiles could help to effectively tailor training to meet the unique needs of individuals struggling with inhibitory control.

Authors

• Hilary Joy Traut, University of Colorado Boulder
  Presenting Author

• Nicolas Chevalier, University of Edinburgh
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ryan Guild, University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yuko Munakata, University of Colorado Boulder
  Non-Presenting Author