On the Ability to Inhibit Simple Thoughts and Actions: II. Stop-Signal Studies of Repetition Priming

When a person inhibits a simple action that is based on a simple thought, does the thought stop with the action? Five experiments were conducted to address that question, attempting to determine the conditions under which simple thoughts could be inhibited. Subjects made speeded category and rhyme judgments about word pairs and were asked to inhibit their (overt) responses on 40% of the trials. The word pairs were presented again, and priming from repetition was used to decide whether the original thoughts went on to completion when their overt responses were inhibited. The results suggested that thoughts could be inhibited by switching to a new task when the response was inhibited (Experiment 2) or by changing the display when the response was inhibited (Experiment 4) but not by simply inhibiting the response (Experiment 1). The results are compared with other studies that used recognition memory as the index of inhibited thought, and implications for the basis of repetition priming are discussed.