The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Health, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Neuropsychology. 2012 May;26(3):347-56. doi: 10.1037/a0027693.
Inhibitory control is associated with temperament and intelligence, which together form an essential component of the ability to adaptively regulate behavior. Impairments in inhibitory control have been linked with a host of common and debilitating conditions, often in a sex-dependent manner. However, sex differences in inhibitory control are often not expressed experimentally during task performance. Here, we sought to examine how sex, temperament, and intelligence are related to different aspects of inhibitory control.
We recruited a large sample of early adolescents (n = 153; mean age 12.6 years) to comprehensively investigate the relationship between sex, self-reported and parent-reported temperamental effortful control, and intelligence with different aspects of inhibitory control--namely, strategic (or proactive) control and evaluative (or reactive) control, assessed using a modified Stroop task.
Compared with males, females were more efficient in their use of strategic control to reduce the magnitude of response conflict. There was no sex difference in evaluative control. Further, whereas high intelligence was associated with fewer errors for both males and females, effortful control was associated with performance accuracy only in females.
These findings highlight sex differences in the relationship of inhibitory control to individual differences in temperamental effortful control in early adolescents and reinforce the generalized positive effects of intelligence.
抑制控制与气质和智力有关，它们共同构成了适应性调节行为的能力的重要组成部分。抑制控制的损伤与许多常见的使人衰弱的疾病有关，而且通常具有性别依赖性。然而，在执行任务期间，抑制控制方面的性别差异通常不会在实验中表现出来。在这里，我们试图研究性别、气质和智力如何与抑制控制的不同方面相关。
我们招募了一大群早期青少年（n=153；平均年龄 12.6 岁），全面研究性别、自我报告和父母报告的气质努力控制以及智力与不同方面的抑制控制之间的关系——即，使用修改后的斯特鲁普任务评估的策略（或主动）控制和评价（或反应）控制。
与男性相比，女性在使用策略控制来减少反应冲突的程度方面更有效。在评价控制方面没有性别差异。此外，尽管高智力与男性和女性的错误都较少有关，但努力控制仅与女性的表现准确性有关。
这些发现强调了在早期青少年中，抑制控制与气质努力控制的个体差异之间的关系存在性别差异，并强化了智力的普遍积极影响。
