Analyzing Cognitive Inhibition: The Go/NoGo, Simon & Stroop Task Study

This report examines cognitive inhibition and information processing speed differences between younger and older adults, investigating the influence of non-clinical anxiety levels, gender, education, and memory function. The study employs Go/NoGo, Simon, and Stroop tasks to measure inhibitory performance and response times. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive inhibition, drawing from neuroscience and psychology, and discusses the role of the prefrontal cortex in executive functions. The research aims to provide insights into how changes in neurological structure and memory function, linked to aging, affect cognitive abilities. The detailed analysis of the tasks, including the conditions and measurements, contributes to a comprehensive understanding of cognitive inhibition in different age groups and its relevance in various professional and medical fields. Desklib provides this student contributed assignment, along with many other resources to aid in student success.

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Aim of the study
1. The aim of the study was to be able to examine if the younger and older adults
have the same influences in terms of information processing speed and
cognitive inhibition between tests or outcome views
2. It was also to be able to analyze if the information processing speed could be
influenced by non-clinical anxiety levels and other factors which includes
gender, years of education, subjective memory function and objective
cognitive function.
3. The study aimed at using successive theories in the psychopathic field using
different tests to see if the results will have similarity or relevancy to expected
hypothetical assumptions.
Introduction
In order to reduce confounding of variables to determine the incidence and natural
history of a condition through use of the best method such as processing speed, influences as
well as similarity of results. More to that, there number of confounding can be infinite and
thus using the same people from the same population where they are a lot of similarities in
variables, ultimately help in achieving results or outcomes that are the same for each test.
Different in population can affect the outcome as some external influences such as
medication and mood may contribute to selective bias.
Inhibitory control or response inhibition is primarily a cognitive behaviour that allows
people to inhibit their impulses; these impulses are the result of natural or dominant responses
to their peripheral stimuli to choose the most appropriate response (Aron, 2007). Inhibition
may occur in many aspects of the brain function from vision, attention and even VIS. The
selected response must be consistent with their critical thoughts and completion of goals. For
instance, Aron (2007) explains that successful suppression of natural response to control

craving needs the active application of inhibitory cognitive control. Loss of inhibitory
cognitive control occurs when an individual loses the ability to inhibit certain emotions or
behaviours; this often leads to an increase in sexual aggression, reduced sensitivity and
empathy, and sociopathic thoughts and actions (Crawford et al., 2002).
The daily behaviors determine the inhibitory control. The ability of persons to fit in
the environments and cope up with distractions and the unexpected changes largely depend
on inhibition. It is for this reason that assessment of inhibitory control is helpful in most of
the environments. Overtime, there have been studies done on aging and cognition and how
they have led to decrease in the working memory processes in the manner of attentional
control, efficiently. A study using fMRI measures in attentional control of the Stroop word
color method showed responsiveness in adults to be decreasing as when compared to the
younger. This reduced the attentional control leading to a conclusion that there is presence of
impairment of attentional in the older participants. This is due to the fact that the activation of
visual processing regions took much longer when compared to the younger participants. The
decrease un activation of processing regions of the ventral visual and anterior inferior
prefrontal cortices, decreased one’s ability in processing of irrelevant information for any
task. The working memory is able to maintain representations of task demands which are
important in processing responsible attention in selecting the task relevant for representation
as well as actions. Selective attention is able to limit contest of working memory to those that
are relevant to the task. It also aids in prioritization of content.
Through the measurement, it is possible to know if a one is distracted or they are
showcasing behaviors or anger issues. In the medical fields, measurement and assessments of
inhibition it is possible to know if a patient portrays suicidal tendencies as well as poor
inhibition and information processing speed. Being that there are a lot of different types of
inhibitions, the study places key interest in the Simon, Stroop and go/no go task in examining

the performance of inhibitory performances in executive brain functions when a load
increases between psychopathic traits. They also analyze the response between healthy
participants as well as the speed to which the response to stimulus is made, when the
response effectors are compatible to target stimulus spatial location. The various aspects also
help in determining cognitive response latency in congruent and incongruent trials in naming
of colored ink words.
In the professional areas, the assessment helps the police, soldiers as well as other
professionals to handle weapons and other dangerous weapons for them to avoid accidents
(Wood, Mathews & Dalgleish, 2001). To assess the inhibition, Test of Variables of Attention
(TOVA) and the Stroop Test are applied. Apart from inhibition, the tests also measure the
response time, the time of speed, how fast one can shift, the hand and eye coordination and
updating. This creates relevancy between of responses between the two age groups and
assists in understanding various states of responses to cognitive inhibition between the same
age groups as well.
Inhibition in neuroscience.
According to Smith (1992) the term inhibition has been in use in the neuroscience
field since the 19th century. It’s understood differently; be it the governing mechanism of
behavioral output, the circuits in the brain, and lastly, enzyme and cellular firing. Early
scientific research also showed the influence of central nervous output on motor output
amongst other body organs, as previously related, had decreased and continues to decrease.
Being that some neurons in the brain are inhibitors, if some GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric
acid) with some neurons become active and its released across the cleft, it can induce
inhibitors against the neuron. When the neuron is inhibited at that level, it affects the circuits
as well as the body system too.

Inhibition in psychology
Sherrington, fraud, Pavlov, William James, Eysenck, and others (Smith 1995,
Dempster and Brainerd, 1995), set the development of influential theories among them the
concept of inhibition in diversification of phenomena such as mental development in a child’s
cerebral cortex. They alluded to the fact that the cerebral cortex develops in order to be able
to suppress impulses of the subcortical ganglia. Similarly, in the learning field, they implied
that when inhibition is no longer accompanied by unconditioned stimulus, the learning
inhibition is able to develop under conditioned stimulus. More to that, they also expressed
that physic repression; such as traumatic events, were removed from the mind through
inhibition mechanism in its active form. In today’s psychology, there is a difference between
willed and active inhibitors. Looking at lateral inhibition where increase of more evidence on
one representation leads to decrease in another, the winner is able to take all representations
an example includes memory.
According to Cohen and Miller (2001) Cognitive control or executive function as
otherwise known is or are higher order function optimizers that also schedule lower ones. The
prefrontal cortex is regarded to as the source of control for optimization with the posterior
cortical being responsible for the target control together with the subcortical regions. To
ascertain the functionality of cognitive control then experimental studies are taken up with
certain measures such as ant saccade latencies, portent latencies, percent recall and stimulus
response being considered. To many authors, sensory, visual, auditory distractors, unwanted
memories, painful emptions, incompatible manuals, vocal and occur responses are all under
play of inhibitors. Using neuropsychiatry, impaired inhibition can be explained in terms of
impulsivity, perseveration, mania, obsessions, attention defections, posttraumatic stress and
aggression among others lieu stress disorders and poor judgement and decision making.

In an environment that is full of information, selection is credited to increase of
inhibitors or amplification of selective attention. Facilitation dissipated through time can also
assist with the headset of decision making and thus causing a priming effect between the
vailed options. In terms of cognitive control contributions to inhibition, the first argument is
based on the fact that without inhibition, there would be too much information swamping the
brain. Another theory argues that without inhibition, there wouldn’t be much of a resistance
to inappropriate urges. According to Tipper (2001), research has shown action deprived from
visual processes with little conscious intention, to which if inhibition is placed, then there
would be less haphazard actions. Therefore, the difference between latency and action is
dependent on the ability of agents to inhibit the inflow of information. Harnischfeger. 1995r
terms the cognitive inhibition as suppression of previously activated cognitive constants,
clearing of irrelevant actions from consciousness and resistance to interfaces from the same
content. This different to behavioral inhibition which includes resistance to temptations and
impulse control amongst others.
Looking at small children and adults suffering from frontal brain damage, there was
an observation by Lhermitte 1983 of patients grabbing into whatever they saw before term as
a way of preventing motion system from inappropriate triggering. The color inhibition theory
by Gregory suggests that a special performance of the computer resulted to color patterns on
a computer screen. Thus, an action is placed by a small child to choose one item instead of
another, is associated to poor mechanism development for choosing in case of conflict or
amplification of relevant response or storing of relevant instruction in one memory.
According to Morton and Munkata (2002), lack of sufficient strength to overcome tendencies
to search of one thing instead of another is due to the lack of sufficient knowledge strength to
support the right choice. Negative priming which is a resultant of delay of time to select a

new target has been attributed to inhibition of selective attention in grounds that are
challenged.
The Stroop effect or the inhibitors have been refuted to be associated with purposeful
forgetting. Researchers such as Macleod attribute inhibitors to confusion to which they place
routine memory to solve conflicts between two different choices of decision with
performance costs as the neutral terms of describing the data. Though there isn’t that much
research surrounding, presence of active inhibitors in cognitive control, there are assumptions
to part of the brain influencing others through suppression or amplification of processes.
Through fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), metabolic demand of coupled
neurocognitive brain processes are measured. The resolutions are several seconds though
there is hope that the it will improve with advancement of technology. The resolution makes
the MRI method unreliable.
A neuropsychological measure of cognitive inhibition has been addressed by Reinhard et al.,
(2017); changes in the humans’ neurological structure and memory function is significantly
linked to the process of aging. These changes in the neurological structure describe the
decline in the efficiency of information processing in the working memory and other tasks
that require executive functions such as inhibitory control. Therefore, a Neuropsychological
measure of cognitive inhibition is used to assess how changes in pre-clinical cognitive
abilities are affected by factors such as age, gender and mental health of individuals. There
are different types of tests and they include Processing Test REST-INH, Equivalencies Test
INH-REST, and Inattention Test FOCUS-SHIF.
In this study, specific brain function of the inhibition was measured using some
computer-based tasks, which were: Go/No Go task, Simon task, and the Stroop task to
determine the cognitive inhibition in the individuals. The Go/No Go task is made up of three

conditions; GO RTs, NoGo Errors and Go Errors. Thus, the response time measured from
this task, errors of commission and errors of omission measure the cognitive inhibition of
both young and older people. The Simon task measures the speed of information processing
through identification of stimulus, selection of response and execution of response (Casey et
al., 1997). This task has two conditions – compatible and incompatible conditions which
measure cognitive inhibition. Lastly, the Stroop task measures the speed and accuracy when
conflicting information is provided as stimuli, in this case where the color of the text and the
word meaning differ or are in conflict with each other. There are two types of Stroop Tasks -
Word and Color - each task has three conditions (congruent, incongruent and neutral). The
Go/No Go task, Simon task, and the Stroop task are discussed in detail in the methods
section.
Literature Review
Cognitive Inhibition Theories
For almost a decade, the term inhibition has been applied to many different aspects of brain
function. The meanings range from the mechanisms that guide and govern behavioural output
and extend to the circuits that exist between the brain regions, to cellular firing to enzymes
(Aron, 2007). From the physiological experiments that were done in the early days, it
emerged that inhibition is more of a simple reflex. Studies conducted ahead of time have been
proven difficult in understanding the interdependence between cognitive functions and
cognitive deficits within the elderly. (>60years). The studies conducted have been aimed at
understanding inf the decline in the working memory is to be attributed to deficits or
impairments in the working memory functions such as storage, as opposed to impairment
related processes such as selection process of representations. More studies have leaned
towards the later especially for the ages 60-75 years, due to the disruption of task relevant
information (West, 199a, May et al., 1999). West (1999a) found out that when the elderly

tried in retaining location of a target stimulus, visual impaired distractors impaired
performance than those in younger children. He therefore sought to conclude that agree
related decreases in inhabitation of irrelevant information was due to the reduction of speed
which the elderly encode information in the working memory. May et.al. (1999) found out
that the susceptibility towards proactive interference, were influenced more in the working
memory due to the changes in attentional mechanisms as opposed to decrease in storage
capacity. She concluded that negative priming; increase of inhibition failures, decreased
efficiency of attention in retrieval mechanisms between relevant and irrelevant information.
This was credited to the decrease in inhibitory function in as one’s ages increases. Hasher and
Zacks (1988) argued that with ageing, a decrease in the rain’s ability to prevent entrance of
irrelevant information to the working memory, suppression of irrelevant information and non-
target presentation, and inhibition of inappropriate responses is limited. Being that neural
activity within the processing systems is responsible for task-relevant information, there
needs to be an amplification so as to increase processing of the task relevant information
while the vice-versa happens to interferences. There is also a dampening of activation of
irrelevant information to a task through modulations since they could interfere with the
working storage memory and also maintenance processes.
Studies have shown that when concertation is placed on patterns alterations in the prefrontal
cotes during a working memory to contribute to lesser activities in younger adults than the
elderly.
When it comes to the older adults, the structures that support attentional control may be
unaffected relatively but the attentional network within which functional connectivity and
interactions between regions decrease. Cabeza et. Ala. (1997) argued that there was a
decrease between prefrontal cortex and partial cortex with aging. For this kind of allegations
and theories to be proved, the Stroop task is the simplest and most powerful way of relating

the changes in substrates.
After showing the reflex inhibition and central inhibition in the brain, the neurophysiologists
set the stage for the development of the highly influential theories of the mind. Such theories
include those that were done by Freud, Pavlov, Eysenck and William James (Aron, 2007).
The authors used the concept of inhibition to explain the several diverse things. Some of the
things explained included the mental development and phenomenon of extinction in learning.
In this development, it is argued that the cerebral cortex develops to inhibit the powerful
impulses of the deep-seated subcortical ganglia. In explaining the phenomenon of extinction
in learning, it is argued that inhibition develops when the conditioned stimulus gets to a point
where it is not again accompanied by the unconditioned stimulus which it was originally
paired with. The third issue is psychic repression of memory where the bad experiences such
as abuse are pushed out of the conscious section of mind using the active mechanism of
inhibition (Aron, 2007).
Some theorists in this field have developed models that feature mental resources
which might be allocated to operations involved in information processing, reporting and
retaining. This implies that the working memory of humans and various areas of the brain are
responsible for the limited mental capacity or resources that are responsible in determining
what is irrelevant and what is relevant in the working memory. Moreover, information
selection speed, based on the cognitive ability of individuals, is dependent on age, gender and
anxiety levels. Harnishfeger (1995) observes that younger people have higher information
selection speed than older people; additionally, people with high levels of anxiety process
information at a faster speed than individuals with low anxiety levels. These observations are
identical to selective attention and word recognition.
Non-clinical anxiety levels, depression and cognitive inhibition

Anxiety levels and depression are associated with an impaired cognitive function in
humans. Various studies have been conducted to explore the effect of anxiety and depression
on the ability of humans to control their cognitive function. For instance, Ng et al (2012)
explored the dissociating effects of clinical anxiety levels and depression on the cognitive
ability of humans based on natural stimuli; this study found that the levels of anxiety and
depression significantly affect. As the anxiety levels impair cognitive control, there is no
adequate evidence to indicate if there is any variation of this effect between the old and
young individuals. Most studies in this field focus on the link between anxiety levels and
cognitive impairment in old adults or aging people. Tales and Basoudan (2016) explore how
anxiety causes cognitive impairment in old adults, especially among individuals living with
dementia. Tales and Basoudan (2016) further explains how non-clinical anxiety significance
influence on the aspects of information processing might have such as speed and ability
among the ageing individuals; this shows that the disadvantageous effects of anxiety are not
only dependent on clinical anxiety but can also be described by factors such as trait anxiety
and state anxiety. There is no adequate evidence that compares or differentiates the effect of
subclinical anxiety levels on cognitive control and information processing speed between the
young and old individuals.
Clinical anxiety levels and inhibitory control are interrelated (Delphin-Combe et al.,
2016). Inhibitory control overrides natural or habitual responses to achieve specific goals
(Malenka, Nestler, & Hyman, 2009). In addition to inhibitory control, individuals may face
distractions in the form of visual or auditory repercussions. Lack of inhibitory control may
lead to greater anxiety and vice versa. Nonclinical anxiety can thus influence the poorer
performance of inhibitory control. The studies of Grillon et al. (2016) shed light on the
difference in the levels of anxiety faced by older and younger individuals. This study reports
that younger people are more anxious, while older adults are more prone to depression.

Younger individuals perform better than older people in inhibitory control. For instance, in
cognitive inhibition tasks, younger people are likely to have a lower response time than older
individuals; young people have a higher speed in processing of information as compared to
older individuals.
Cognitive steer over unwanted instances or stimuli is set by specific tasks or
memories. The frontal lobe damage in anxiety induces impulsivity, distractibility, and
perseveration due to the damage made to the inhibitory mechanism. The link between
perceived and actual memory and information processing pace are critical portions of
metacognitive processes. These processes are perceptions of difficulty that is yet to be
recognized in the context of human mind. Research is also suggesting that people with
anxiety are less capable of inhibiting their abilities to process information based on anxiety
levels than the average person (Najmi et al., 2015). However, the prominent studies in these
issues have focused on clinical anxiety and its treatments. Although clinical anxiety is a
critical health ailment, the concepts of sub-clinical and nonclinical anxiety must not be
overruled entirely. Based on the dire need to determine the differences between the young
and older adults in the relationship between subclinical anxiety levels and information
processing speed, this research has a potential to shed more light upon the issue of non-
clinical anxiety in both young and older adults. Moreover, the findings of this study explain
the cognitive performance of both young and old adults based on their levels of anxiety and
depression about factors such as gender, years of education, objective and subjective
cognitive functions.
Subjective and objective cognitive function and cognitive inhibition
According to Joorman (2010), cognitive inhibition is a basic method through which
emotion of persons are controlled. Deficits in inhibition of any negative material are seriously