Abstract
Recently inhibited (distractor-related) responses produce inhibitory after-effects which, among other things, delay the processing of later arriving targets that require such outputs. While such processing may be beneficial in static (relevancy) environments, it is detrimental relevancy status can be reversed (i.e., distractor becomes a target). In the latter case, the question is do inhibitory after-effects provide a positive influence on later processing that would justify its existence? The suggestion tested here is whether response-inhibition-induced after-effects help to prevent later response selection errors, and whether this protection persists with practice? If so, response errors should be less likely for recently inhibited responses, which resist future use, compared to non-inhibited control responses. Method: subjects completed 16 sessions of 248 prime (1st) –probe (2nd) trials pairs in a typical spatial negative priming (SNP) task. There were two probe types; target-only, or a target plus a distractor event. Results: Control responses were used in error significantly more often than prime distractor-related responses on the probe trial for both probe types, Unexpectedly, probe distractor-associated responses were used least often in error. Conclusion: inhibitory after-effects tied to recently inhibited (prime) responses do guard against their later erroneous use and so are beneficial in this regard. This error protection persists over practice.Acknowledgments: NSERC