Experimental Research On Inhibitory Control Among College Students With Different Types Of Behavioral Inhibition

Inhibitory control, as an important component of executive function of thebrain, can be found in many aspects of cognition and behavioral process.Response inhibition, a class of inhibitory control capability, refers to inhibit theinappropriate reaction or motion, which does not meet the current taskrequirement. The interference suppression is a process of suppressing theirrelevant stimulus when the response goal is inconsistent with the responseaction, or internal stimulus to interfere with the working memory. Responseinhibition and interference suppression reflect different aspects of inhibitorycontrol of executive function, as well as play a critical role in the understandingprocess of individual cognition. Behavioral inhibition has been proposed as thebehavior suppression in the social level. It mainly takes place in withholding the behavior of help seeking, intimacy, self-confidence, rejection, trust, and obey.The present research aims at examine the interrelationship between inhibitorycontrol of executive function and inhibition behavioral in social level. In thepresent research, college students were selected; high and low behavioralinhibition subgroups are determined in the use of behavioral inhibition scale inaccordance with the overall scale score distribution. A total of44students with22in each subgroup participated in the experiments. The Go/Nogo task isapplied to measure participants’ response inhibition; the Emotional Stroopparadigm is employed to examine how participant perform interferencesuppression under the emotional information. The anxiety level of eachparticipant is being controlled as a covariance. The research findings asfollowed:(1) In the Go/Nogo task, the mean reaction time of low behavioral inhibitionsubgroup is significantly higher than the high behavioral inhibitionsubgroup; but the differences of error rates between two subgroups are not found.(2) In the Emotional Stroop paradigm, the Emotional Stroop effect exists ina broad range among college students; Reversal of emotional Stroopeffect has been found in the low behavioral inhibition subgroup.(3) College students have the capacity of resisting emotional disturbance;and the difference of this capacity has been found between thetwo subgroups.