Suchergebnisse

Previous research on the Repression-Sensitization (R-S) Scale found that repressors gave fewer sexual associations than sensitizers on a double entendre word association task. That difference, however, may have been due either to differential familiarity, or external, social inhibition,
rather than to internal, cognitive defense processes. In the present experiment, male sensitizers, neutrals, and repressors performed an identification task and an association task with word lists containing double entendres. They received one of three instruction sets, designed either to
facilitate, inhibit, or disregard the possible sexual associations. The identification task results failed to support the familiarity hypothesis. The association task results suggested that repressors are more responsive to external, social inhibition cues than are either sensitizers or neutrals.

AbstractInhibitory control (IC) is a core executive function integral to self‐regulation and cognitive control, yet is itself multi‐componential. Directed global inhibition entails stopping an action on demand. Competitive inhibition is engaged when an alternative response must also be produced. Related, but not an executive function, is temperamentally‐driven wariness of novelty, known as behavioural inhibition. Understanding early development of these components has been hampered by a shortage of suitable measures. We combine established and novel measures to capture directed global inhibition (Toy Prohibition, Touchscreen Prohibition), competitive inhibition (A‐not‐B, Early Childhood Inhibitory Touchscreen Task; ECITT) and behavioural inhibition (Touchscreen Approach) in 113 10‐ and 16‐month‐olds (73 seen longitudinally). ECITT performance shows good 1‐week test‐retest reliability at 10‐months (r = 0.30–0.60) but little stability to 16‐months. Directed global inhibition performance shows developmental progression but little stability of individual differences from 10 to 16 months. Performance on measures targeting similar IC components shows greater coherence at 16‐months (r = 0.23–0.59) compared with 10‐months (r = 0.09–0.35). Probing of ECITT condition effects indicates toddlers are more able, compared with infants, to override immediate prepotencies; indicative of increasingly flexible control over behaviour. However, exerting IC over cumulative prepotencies appears just as challenging for toddlers as infants. Exploratory analyses show little evidence for cross‐sectional or longitudinal associations between behavioural, directed global and competitive inhibition. In combination, these findings indicate that IC is not yet a stable, unidimensional construct during the transition between infancy and toddlerhood, and highlight the need for careful selection of multiple measures for those interested in capturing early variation in IC.

Inhibitory control processes have been recently considered to be involved in interference resolution in bilinguals at the phonological level. In this study we explored if interference resolution is also carried out by this inhibitory mechanism at the grammatical level. Thirty-two bilinguals (Italian-L1 and Spanish-L2) participated. All of them completed two tasks. In the first one they had to name pictures in L2. We manipulated gender congruency between the two languages and the number of presentations of the pictures (1 and 5). Results showed a gender congruency effect with slower naming latencies in the incongruent condition. In the second task, participants were presented with the pictures practiced during the first naming task, but now they were asked to produce the L1 article. Results showed a grammatical gender congruency effect in L1 that increased for those words practiced five times in L2. Our conclusion is that an inhibitory mechanism was involved in the suppression of the native language during a picture naming task. Furthermore, this inhibitory process was also involved in suppressing grammatical gender when it was a source of competition between the languages. ; Andalusian Government (P08-HUM-03600) ; EDU2008-01111 and CSD2008-00048 (Spanish Ministry of Education) ; P07-HUM-02510 and P08-HUM-03600 from the Andalusian Government