The Development of Selective Inhibitory Control Across the Life Span

Abstract

A modification of the stop-signal task was used to investigate the development of selective inhibitory control. A group of 317 participants, age 6 to 82 years, performed a visual choice reaction time (go) task and attempted to selectively inhibit their response to the go task when hearing one of two randomly presented tones (1000 Hz, 250 Hz), each presented on 20% of trials. Measures of response execution and inhibition were assessed by using reaction times to the go signal (GoRT) and stop signal (SSRT), respectively. Results indicated that SSRT gets faster with increasing age throughout childhood, with pronounced slowing in older adulthood. In addition, strong evidence was obtained for age-related speeding in GoRT throughout childhood, with marked slowing throughout adulthood. Subsequent hierarchical regression analyses illustrated that the age-related changes in selective inhibitory control could not be explained simply by overall slowing or speeding of responses. Findings are discussed in regard to the decay and maturation of selective inhibitory control across the life span.