Developmental changes in inhibitory processing: evidence from psychophysiological measures

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Abstract

Two major theories of the development of inhibitory functioning are discussed that assume a close relation between inhibitory ability and the maturation of the frontal lobes. It is argued that a psychophysiological approach may add considerably to the study of developmental change in inhibitory processes. A selective review is presented of studies examining heart rate and brain potential measures obtained in a variety of paradigms supposedly showing inhibitory control. The results of these studies are discussed within the framework proposed by Stuss et al. [Stuss, D.T., Shallice, T., Alexander, M.P., Picton, T.W., 1995. A multidisciplinary approach to anterior attentional processing. In: Grafman, J., Holyoak, K.J., Boller, F. (Eds.), Structure and functions of the human prefrontal cortex. Ann. New York Acad. Sci. 769, 191–211], relating component processes of supervisory-system control to distinct brain regions and psychophysiological measures of attention. It is concluded that the supervisory-system framework provides a heuristic way for examining developmental changes in inhibitory processing.

Introduction

Traditionally, developmental theories emphasize the role of changes in the capacity to store and process information in accounting for cognitive development. Several different concepts of capacity have appeared in the developmental literature (Halford, 1993). The first notion is capacity as a ‘resource’, a very global concept that can be applied to a broad range of phenomena. A resource is a type of mental energy that can be allocated to tasks but is limited in supply. Tasks vary in their demands on resources and if a task requires more resources than available, performance will suffer. Developmental psychologists have used this notion of capacity to account for children's errors on a wide variety of tasks. A more specific notion of capacity is associated with working memory. Case (1985), for example, proposed working memory to consist of three distinct components; a ‘total processing space’ is composed of an ‘operating space’ and a ‘storage space’. Total processing space is constant and does not increase during development. There is a trade-off between operating space and storage space so that more space is left for storage, as operating space becomes more efficient. Although total capacity does not vary with age, processing efficiency will increase so that less capacity is needed for operational function and more capacity can be used for storage of additional information or execution of other processes. According to this notion, the total amount of capacity is stable throughout development but, as processing becomes more efficient, more capacity can be made available to improve cognitive function. For somewhat different notions of capacity in the developmental literature the interested reader is referred to Pascual-Loene, 1970, Kail, 1988, Kail, 1991, Kail and Salthouse, 1994, Halford, 1993.

The idea that inhibitory processes may also contribute to the observed developmental changes emerged only gradually from recent investigations of children's cognitive development and other aspects of behavior (Howe and Pasnak, 1993). The view of inhibitory function as a major developmental dimension is suggested from findings indicating age differences in the ability to inhibit on a wide range of tasks. For example, as children grow older, they are better able to suppress reflexive or prepotent responses (Diamond, 1990, Diamond et al., 1994). Children become less sensitive to noise in selective attention tasks (Ridderinkhof and Van der Molen, 1995, Burack and Enns, 1997) and to distractors in memory tasks (Bjorklund and Harnishfeger, 1990). Children also become more likely to inhibit previously correct solutions that are currently incorrect (Welsh et al., 1991). These and other findings led developmental psychologists to consider inhibitory processes more seriously (Dempster, 1993, Bjorklund and Harnishfeger, 1995).

Section snippets

Development of inhibition

The recent interest in inhibitory ability materialized into two major models of cognitive development. Bjorklund and Harnishfeger (1990) derived from the cognitive aging literature (Hasher and Zacks, 1988) a model of inefficient inhibition that is basically an extension of the mental capacity notion. Dempster, 1992, Dempster, 1993 proposed another framework in which the susceptibility to interference holds a key position. He adopted a neuropsychological perspective assuming that developmental

Two-tiered inhibition model

Hierarchical control and competitive interaction are both important aspects of the influential ‘supervisory-system’ model proposed by Norman and Shallice (1986). This model assumes that a supervisory system is invoked whenever the need arises for top-down activation of relevant processing structures and inhibition of inappropriate actions or thoughts. Under most circumstances, however, actions and thoughts are selected automatically without coming to the attention of the supervisory system and

Psychophysiological analysis

The significance of a psychophysiological analysis of inhibition is at least three-fold. First, in many paradigms, inhibition must be inferred from the absence of overt behavior (e.g. the suppression of a prepared response on a ‘no-go’ trial). Psychophysiological measures can then be used to assess the temporal dynamics of inhibition. Secondly, psychophysiological measures are extremely useful when overt behavioral indices of inhibition are either difficult or impossible to obtain (e.g.

Conclusion

Two theories on the development of inhibitory processes emerged recently from the literature; ‘inefficient-inhibition’ theory proposed by Bjorklund and Harnishfeger, 1990, Bjorklund and Harnishfeger, 1995, Harnishfeger, 1995 and ‘susceptibility-to-interference’ theory submitted by Dempster, 1992, Dempster, 1993. Both theories assume that the development of inhibitory ability is closely associated to maturational changes of the frontal lobes. This inference is derived primarily from the striking

Acknowledgements

The writing of this article was facilitated by the support of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) at Wassenaar, The Netherlands, and the hospitality provided by Dr Eric Soetens at the University of Brussels (VUB). The research reported in this article has been supported by NWO grants #575-63-082, #575-63-082B, and #575-63-082C, and NIH grant MH40418. The author wishes to thank Dick Jennings, Riek Somsen and Richard Ridderinkof for their

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