Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
Cognition. 2012 Dec;125(3):498-503. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2012.07.018. Epub 2012 Aug 22.
Reward prospect has been demonstrated to facilitate various cognitive and behavioral operations, particularly by enhancing the speed and vigor of processes linked to approaching reward. Studies in this domain typically employed task regimes in which participants' overt responses are facilitated by prospective rewards. In contrast, we demonstrate here that even the cancellation of a motor response can be accelerated by reward prospect, thus signifying reward-related benefits on restraint rather than approach behavior. Importantly, this facilitation occurred independent of strategy-related adjustments of response speed, which are known to systematically distort the estimation of response-cancellation speed. The fact that motivational factors can indeed facilitate response inhibition is not only relevant for understanding how motivation and response inhibition interact in healthy participants but also for work on various patient groups that display response-inhibition deficits, suggesting that core differences in the ability to inhibit motor responses have to be differentiated from motivational factors.
奖励预期已被证明可以促进各种认知和行为操作，特别是通过增强与接近奖励相关的过程的速度和活力。该领域的研究通常采用任务制度，其中参与者的公开反应受到预期奖励的促进。相比之下，我们在这里证明，即使是对运动反应的取消也可以通过奖励预期来加速，从而表示奖励与抑制而不是接近行为有关。重要的是，这种促进作用独立于与策略相关的反应速度调整，而这些调整已知会系统地扭曲对反应取消速度的估计。事实上，动机因素确实可以促进反应抑制，这不仅对于理解动机和反应抑制如何在健康参与者中相互作用是相关的，而且对于显示反应抑制缺陷的各种患者群体的工作也是相关的，这表明抑制运动反应的能力的核心差异必须与动机因素区分开来。
