Are you able not to react to what you hear? Inhibition behavior measured with an auditory Go/NoGo paradigm

ABSTRACT

In everyday life people have to attend to, react to, or inhibit reactions to visual and acoustic cues. These abilities are frequently measured with Go/NoGo tasks using visual stimuli. However, these abilities have rarely been examined with auditory cues. The aims of our study (N = 106) are to develop an auditory Go/NoGo paradigm and to describe brain-healthy participants’ performance. We tested convergent validity of the auditory Go/NoGo paradigm by analyzing the correlations with other neuropsychological tasks assessing attentional control and executive functions. We also analyzed the ecological validity of the task by examining correlations of self-reported impulsivity. In the first step we found that the participants are able to differentiate correctly among several sounds and also to appropriately react or inhibit a certain reaction most of the times. Convergent validity was suggested by correlations between the auditory Go/NoGo paradigm and the Color Word Interference Test, Trail Making Test, and Modified Card Sorting Test. We did not find correlations with self-reported impulsivity. Overall, the auditory Go/NoGo paradigm may be used to assess attention and inhibition in the context of auditory stimuli. Future studies may adapt the auditory Go/NoGo paradigm with specific acoustic stimuli (e.g., sound of opening a bottle) in order to address cognitive biases in particular disorders (e.g., alcohol dependence).

KEYWORDS:

• Auditory attention
• Cognitive control
• Executive functions
• Impulsivity
• Inhibition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).