Department of Psychiatry, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
J Clin Exp Neuropsychol. 2012;34(10):1016-32. doi: 10.1080/13803395.2012.706261. Epub 2012 Aug 14.
This study addresses the relationship between trait impulsivity and inhibitory control, two features known to be impaired in a number of psychiatric conditions. While impulsivity is often measured using psychometric self-report questionnaires, the inhibition of inappropriate, impulsive motor responses is typically measured using experimental laboratory tasks. It remains unclear, however, whether psychometrically assessed impulsivity and experimentally operationalized inhibitory performance are related to each other. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between these two traits in a large sample using correlative and latent variable analysis. A total of 504 healthy individuals completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) and a battery of four prepotent response inhibition paradigms: the antisaccade, Stroop, stop-signal, and go/no-go tasks. We found significant associations of BIS impulsivity with commission errors on the go/no-go task and directional errors on the antisaccade task, over and above effects of age, gender, and intelligence. Latent variable analysis (a) supported the idea that all four inhibitory measures load on the same underlying construct termed "prepotent response inhibition" and (b) revealed that 12% of variance of the prepotent response inhibition construct could be explained by BIS impulsivity. Overall, the magnitude of associations observed was small, indicating that while a portion of variance in prepotent response inhibition can be explained by psychometric trait impulsivity, the majority of variance remains unexplained. Thus, these findings suggest that prepotent response inhibition paradigms can account for psychometric trait impulsivity only to a limited extent. Implications for studies of patient populations with symptoms of impulsivity are discussed.
这项研究探讨了特质冲动性和抑制控制之间的关系，这两个特征已知在许多精神疾病中受到损害。虽然冲动性通常使用心理测量自评问卷来衡量，但不适当的冲动运动反应的抑制通常使用实验实验室任务来衡量。然而，心理测量评估的冲动性和实验操作的抑制性能之间是否相关仍不清楚。因此，我们使用相关和潜在变量分析在一个大样本中研究了这两个特征之间的关系。共有 504 名健康个体完成了巴瑞特冲动量表（BIS-11）和四个冲动反应抑制范式的电池：反扫视、Stroop、停止信号和 Go/No-Go 任务。我们发现 BIS 冲动性与 Go/No-Go 任务的错误率和反扫视任务的定向错误显著相关，超过了年龄、性别和智力的影响。潜在变量分析（a）支持了以下观点，即所有四个抑制措施都加载在同一个称为“冲动反应抑制”的潜在结构上，（b）表明，冲动反应抑制结构的 12%的方差可以由 BIS 冲动性来解释。总体而言，观察到的关联幅度较小，表明虽然冲动反应抑制的一部分方差可以用心理测量特质冲动性来解释，但大部分方差仍未得到解释。因此，这些发现表明，冲动反应抑制范式只能在有限的程度上解释心理测量特质冲动性。讨论了对具有冲动症状的患者群体进行研究的意义。
