A mismatch between early and recent life stress predicts better response inhibition, but not cognitive inhibition

Figures & data

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for and correlations between raw stress and inhibition variables.

			Correlation matrix
Variable	M	SD	1.	2.	3.	4.
1. Early life stress	35.3	13.1
2. Recent life stress	34.0	8.1	.34***
3. Stress mismatch	10.3	12.1	.86***	.47***
4. Stop-signal reaction time	325.7	44.9	−.17*	−.17*	−.21**
5. Flanker interference effect	83.1	35.3	.00	.01	.03	.08

***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05

Table 2. Models examining relations between response inhibition and early/recent life stress mismatch.

Model	Distribution	SSRT a predictor of mismatch 0s?	SSRT a predictor of mismatch count?	Model BIC	Mismatch 0s ∼ SSRT p	Mismatch count ∼ SSRT p
GLM	Poisson	–	Yes	2079.6	–	<.001
Zero-inflated	Poisson	Yes	Yes	1886.8	.265	<.001
Zero-inflated	Poisson	No	Yes	1883.0	–	<.001
Zero-inflated	Poisson	Yes	No	1963.1	.255	–
Hurdle	Poisson	Yes	Yes	1886.8	.255	<.001
Hurdle	Poisson	No	Yes	1883.0	–	<.001
Hurdle	Poisson	Yes	No	1963.1	.255	–
GLM	Negative Binomial	–	Yes	1043.0	–	<.001
Zero-inflated	Negative Binomial	Yes	Yes	1053.0	.966	.001
Zero-inflated	Negative Binomial	No	Yes	1048.0	–	.001
Zero-inflated	Negative Binomial	Yes	No	1059.4		–
Hurdle	Negative Binomial	Yes	Yes	1053.0	.255	.001
Hurdle	Negative Binomial	No	Yes	1049.2	–	.001
Hurdle	Negative Binomial	Yes	No	1058.1	.255	–

Note. GLM = generalized linear model; SSRT = stop-signal reaction time; BIC = Bayesian information criterion (lower indicates better fit). A blank cell indicates that the model was not fully estimable, and a dash indicates that the coefficient is not estimated because of model structure (e.g. a Poisson GLM does not fit a predictor of zeros separate from the Poisson distribution). The best-fitting model is highlighted in bold. All estimates were such that better response inhibition was associated with a greater degree of mismatch. In every model, better response inhibition was significantly associated with a greater degree of mismatch between early and recent stress exposure.

Table 3. Models examining relations between cognitive inhibition and early/recent life stress mismatch.

Model	Distribution	FIE a predictor of mismatch 0s?	FIE a predictor of mismatch count?	Model BIC	Mismatch 0s ∼ FIE p	Mismatch count ∼ FIE p
GLM	Poisson	–	Yes	2182.0	–	.112
Zero-inflated	Poisson	Yes	Yes	1968.1	.577	.332
Zero-inflated	Poisson	No	Yes	1963.4	–	.332
Zero-inflated	Poisson	Yes	No	1964.0	.577	–
Hurdle	Poisson	Yes	Yes	1968.1	.577	.332
Hurdle	Poisson	No	Yes	1963.4	–	.332
Hurdle	Poisson	Yes	No	1964.0	.577	–
GLM	Negative Binomial	–	Yes	1054.1	–	.610
Zero-inflated	Negative Binomial	Yes	Yes	1064.2	.915	.633
Zero-inflated	Negative Binomial	No	Yes	1059.1	–	.625
Zero-inflated	Negative Binomial	Yes	No	1059.4	.983	–
Hurdle	Negative Binomial	Yes	Yes	1064.0	.577	.746
Hurdle	Negative Binomial	No	Yes	1059.3	–	.746
Hurdle	Negative Binomial	Yes	No	1059.1	.577	–

Note. GLM = generalized linear model; FIE = flanker interference effect; BIC = Bayesian information criterion (lower indicates better fit). A dash indicates that the coefficient is not estimated because of model structure (e.g. a Poisson GLM does not fit a predictor of zeros separate from the Poisson distribution). The best-fitting model is highlighted in bold. In every model, cognitive inhibition was unassociated with mismatch between early and recent life stress, either in the likelihood of mismatch occurring at all, or in the degree of mismatch if it did occur.

Figure 1. Stressor mismatch in relation to inhibitory control outcomes.

Note. A greater mismatch between early and recent life stress was associated with better response inhibition (i.e. less stop-signal reaction time, which indicates the time needed to stop an ongoing response) (a). However, mismatch between early and recent life stress was unassociated with cognitive inhibition (i.e. flanker interference) (b). Note that these figures omit two outliers in stress mismatch for ease of visualization; analyses excluding those outliers did not differ from those in the main text and are presented in Supplemental Material.

Data availability statement

Data and syntax for analyses are available at https://osf.io/qau6y/?view_only=384bd223ff5e494cb9e67e68b6a12670.