The Effect Of Reward On Inhibitory Control In Individuals With Different Trait Anxiety

Inhibition control refers to a cognitive process that prevents individuals from performing normal thinking and behavioral activities by preventing irrelevant or interfering information from entering working memory(Nigg,2002).From the perspective of cognition,inhibition control not only has the basic function of guiding the achievement of goals,but also is responsible for dynamically modifying and canceling the originally planned behavior;Inhibition control can not only promote the development of advanced cognitive abilities such as intelligence,attention,memory and reading ability,but also have an important impact on the development of emotional regulation,social abilities and problem-solving abilities.And inhibition defects have been shown to play a vital role in neurological syndromes,such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(Barkley,1997),obsessive-compulsive affective disorder(Bannon,2002),addiction(Bechara,2005)and Prospective memory and more.Braver and Burgess(2007)proposed the theory of dual cognitive control,which divided cognitive control into active control and reactive control.This provides a new perspective for studying inhibition control.Trait anxiety as a stable personality trait weakens an individual's suppressive function.How to improve individual inhibition control has become a hot spot of current research.And does reward,as one of the most common reinforcements in life,affect the individual's inhibition control?Are rewards the same for different trait anxiety individuals?Based on the above issues,this study explores the relationship between reward,trait anxiety,and inhibition control through two experiments from the perspective of dual cognitive control theory:Experiment one explores the effect of different reward types(above-threshold reward,subliminal reward,and no reward)on the individual's ability to inhibition control by manipulating the time of reward presentation.The results show that reward can improve the ability of individuals to suppress control.Subliminal reward affect the cognitive performance of individuals as well as above-threshold reward,the error rate of subjects under the above-threshold reward and subliminal reward is significantly less than the error rate without reward.Above-threshold reward,the Stroop effect of subliminal reward is significantly smaller than the Stroop effect without rewards,indicating that rewards enable individuals to enhance active control,suppress interference from the top down,and respond to task goals.The conflict adaptation effect exists in the Stroop task,which indicates that it will not affect individual reactive control while enhancing active control.In experiment two,the high and low trait anxiety group was selected.By manipulating the time of reward presentation,the effects of different reward types(abovethreshold reward,subliminal reward,and no reward)on the suppression and control ability of different trait anxiety individuals were discussed.The results show that reward can improve the ability of suppression and control of individuals with different trait anxiety,and the error rate of individuals with above-threshold reward and subliminal reward is significantly smaller than that without reward.Even in the absence of a threatening stimulus distractor,trait anxiety also weakened the individual's ability to inhibition control,the Stroop effect in the high trait anxiety group was significantly greater than that in the low trait anxiety group.Reward can reduce the error rate of individuals with different trait anxieties when completing inhibition control tasks,but the types of rewards have different effects on the Stroop effect of different trait anxious individuals,the enhancement effect of above-threshold reward on high trait anxiety group is not obvious,the Stroop effect of the high-trait anxiety group was significantly greater than the low-trait anxiety group under the above-threshold reward;but the difference between the high-trait anxiety group and the low-trait anxiety group was not significant under the subliminal reward condition,indicating that subliminal reward can significantly enhance the high-trait anxiety individuals.