The crux of the dispute on the mutual relations between attention and consciousness, and to which I have referred in this paper, lies in the question of what can be attended in spatial attention that obviously resonates with the phenomenological issue of intentionality. The discussion has been initiated by Christopher Mole. He began by calling for a commonsense psychology, according to which one is conscious of everything that one pays attention to, but one does not pay attention to all the (...) things that one is conscious of. In other words, attention is supposed to be a condition which is sufficient but not necessary for consciousness, i.e., consciousness is a necessary concomitant of attention, but attention is not a necessary concomitant of consciousness. Mole seeks to validate his stance with data from psychology labs. His view is, however, partly confronted, for instance, by Robert Kentridge, Lee de-Wit and Charles Heywood, who used their experimental research on a neurological condition called blindsight as evidence of a dissociation between attention and consciousness, i.e., that visual attention is not a sufficient precondition for visual awareness. In this meta-theoretical state of affairs, I would like to focus on the cognitive phenomenon most often referred to as Inhibition of Return and suggest that, following its micro dynamics from the perspective of micro-phenomenology, it can be used to actually showcase all of the options on both sides of the argument. One of my leading goals would be also to follow Mole’s attempt to link attention with agency but where we differ is that I wish to heuristically articulate the matter in terms of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notion of embodied pre-reflective intentionality. (shrink)

In everyday parlance, "inhibition" suggests repression, tight control, the opposite of freedom. In medicine and psychotherapy the term is commonplace, its definition understood. Relating how inhibition—the word and the concept—became a bridge between society at large and the natural sciences of mind and brain, Smith constructs an engagingly original history of our view of ourselves. Not until the late nineteenth century did the term "inhibition" become common in English, connoting the dependency of reason and of civilization itself (...) on the repression of "the beast within." This usage followed a century of Enlightenment thought about human nature and the nature of the human mind. Smith traces theories of inhibitory control from the moralistic psychologies of the early nineteenth century to the famous twentieth-century schools of Sherrington, Pavlov, and Freud. He finds that the meanings of "inhibition" cross disciplinary boundaries and outline the growth of our belief in the self-regulated person. (shrink)

When must a specific cognitive habit be called upon to solve a problem? In the subject’s learning process, “knowing-to” is connected with a conscious particular judgment of truth or “aha” moment enacting a new behavioral schema. This paper comments on recent experiments supporting the view that a shift from automatic to controlled forms of inhibition, involving conscious attention, is crucial for detecting errors and activating a new strategy in complex cognitive situations. The part that consciousness plays in this process (...) agrees with its philosophical description as “judge of truth”, and can thus be regarded as an essential precursor to the development of higher cognitive habits. In this regard, John Henry Newman’s explanation of human assent to truth, for which our consciousness of self is always prior, proves to be decisive. (shrink)

Inhibition, an executive function, is critical for achieving goals that require suppressing unwanted behaviours, thoughts, or distractions. One hypothesis of the emotion and goal compatibility theory is that emotions of sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control. Across Experiments 1–4, we tested this hypothesis by inducing a happy, sad, fearful, and neutral emotional state prior to completing an inhibition task that indexed a specific facet of inhibition (oculomotor, resisting interference, behavioural, and cognitive). In Experiment 4, we included an (...) anger induction to examine whether valence or motivational-orientation best-predicted performance. We found support that fear and sadness enhanced inhibition except when inhibition required resisting interference. We argue that sadness and fear enhance inhibitory control aiding the detection and analysis of problems (i.e. sadness) or threats (i.e. fear) within one’s environment. In sum, this work highlights the importance of identifying how negative emotions can be beneficial for and interact with specific executive functions influencing down-stream processing including attention, cognition, and memory. (shrink)

We examined two potential correlates of hypnotic suggestibility: dissociation and cognitive inhibition. Dissociation is the foundation of two of the major theories of hypnosis and other theories commonly postulate that hypnotic responding is a result of attentional abilities . Participants were administered the Waterloo-Stanford Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form C. Under the guise of an unrelated study, 180 of these participants also completed: a version of the Dissociative Experiences Scale that is normally distributed in non-clinical populations; a latent (...) inhibition task, a spatial negative priming task, and a memory task designed to measure negative priming. The data ruled out even moderate correlations between hypnotic suggestibility and all the measures of dissociation and cognitive inhibition overall, though they also indicated gender differences. The results are a challenge for existing theories of hypnosis. (shrink)

Stimuli that resemble humans, but are not perfectly human-like, are disliked compared to distinctly human and nonhuman stimuli. Accounts of this “Uncanny Valley” effect often focus on how changes in human resemblance can evoke different emotional responses. We present an alternate account based on the novel hypothesis that the Uncanny Valley is not directly related to ‘human-likeness’ per se, but instead reflects a more general form of stimulus devaluation that occurs when inhibition is triggered to resolve conflict between competing (...) stimulus-related representations. We consider existing support for this inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and further assess its feasibility through tests of two corresponding predictions that arise from the link between conflict-resolving inhibition and aversive response: 1) that the pronounced disliking of Uncanny-type stimuli will occur for any image that strongly activates multiple competing stimulus representations, even in the absence of any human-likeness, and 2) that the negative peak of an ‘Uncanny Valley’ should occur at the point of greatest stimulus-related conflict and not (in the presence of human-likeness) always closer to the ‘human’ end of a perceptual continuum. We measured affective responses to a set of line drawings representing nonhuman animal-animal morphs, in which each continuum midpoint was a bistable image (Exp. 1), as well as to sets of human-robot and human-animal computer-generated morphs (Exp. 2). Affective trends depicting classic Uncanny Valley functions occurred for all continua, including the nonhuman stimuli. Images at continua midpoints elicited significantly more negative affect than images at endpoints, even when the continua included a human endpoint. This illustrates the feasibility of the inhibitory-devaluation hypothesis and the need for further research into the possibility that the strong dislike of Uncanny-type stimuli reflects the negative affective consequences of cognitive inhibition. (shrink)

We recently described a novel form of stress‐associated bidirectional plasticity at GABA synapses onto hypothalamic parvocellular neuroendocrine cells (PNCs), the apex of the hypothalamus‐pituitary‐adrenal axis. This plasticity may contribute to neuroendocrine adaptation. However, this GABA synapse plasticity likely does not translate into a simple more and less of inhibition because the ionic driving force for Cl−, the primary charge carrier for GABAA receptors, is dynamic. Specifically, stress impairs a Cl− extrusion mechanism in PNCs. This not only renders the steady‐state (...) GABA response less hyperpolarizing but also makes PNCs susceptible to the activity‐dependent accumulation of Cl−. Accordingly, GABA synapse plasticity impacts both the robustness of GABA voltage response and dynamic Cl− loading, imposing nonlinear influences on PNC excitability during circuit activities. This theoretical consideration predicts roles for GABA transmission far more versatile than canonical inhibition. We propose potential impacts of GABA synapse plasticity on the experience‐dependent fine‐tuning of neuroendocrine stress responses. (shrink)

Inhibition, associated with self-efficacy, enables people to control thought and action and inhibit disturbing stimulus and impulsion and has certain evolutionary significance. This study analyzed the neural correlates of inhibition modulated by self-efficacy. Self-efficacy was assessed by using the survey adapted from the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Fifty college students divided into low and high self-efficacy groups participated in the experiments. Their ability to conduct inhibitory control was studied through Go/No-Go tasks. During the tasks, we recorded students’ (...) brain activity, focusing on N2 and P3 components in the event-related potential. Larger No-Go N2 amplitudes for the high self-efficacy group were found compared with the low self-efficacy group. Conflict detection as represented by N2 was modulated by self-efficacy, whereas conflict inhibition as represented by P3 was not modulated by self-efficacy. The highly self-efficacious students were more capable of detecting conflicts but not necessarily more capable of inhibiting action given that conflict was detected. Taken together, these findings offer neurophysiological evidence of the important regulatory role of self-efficacy in inhibitory control ability development. (shrink)

Recent pain research has concentrated heavily on excitatory processes. However, noxious stimuli activate excitatory and inhibitory systems. As failure of inhibition could underlie some forms of pathological pain, it may be argued that a full understanding of the mechanisms underlying the development of pain states can only come from a consideration of all the central sequelae of injurious stimuli. [berkley; blumberg et al.; coderre & katz; dickenson; mcmahon; weisenfeld-hallin et al.].

This book is a thought-provoking assessment of assumptions inhibiting progress in comparative biology. The volume is inspired by a list generated years earlier by Donn Rosen, one of the most influential, innovative and productive comparative biologists of the latter 20th century. His list has assumed almost legendary status among comparative evolutionary biologists. Surprisingly many of the obstructing assumptions implicated by Rosen remain relevant today. Any comparative biologist hoping to avoid such assumptions in their own research will benefit from this introspective (...) volume. (shrink)

Gain or omission/termination of loss produces approach; while loss or omission/termination of gain produces withdrawal. Control of approach/withdrawal motivation is distinct from valuation of gain/loss and does not entail learning – making “reward” and “punishment” ambiguous. Approach-withdrawal goal conflict engages a neurally distinct Behavioural Inhibition System, which controls “anxiety” but not “fear”.

Recent studies suggest that instrumental hypnosis is a useful experimental tool to investigate emotional and language processing effects. However, the capacity of hypnotic suggestions to intervene during the response inhibition of emotional words remains elusive. This study investigated whether hypnotic suggestion can improve the inhibition of prepotent negative word responses in an emotional Hayling sentence completion task. High-suggestible participants performed a computerised emotional Hayling task. They were first asked to select the appropriate words ending highly predictable sentences among (...) two propositions (initiation part), and then to select the filler words that did not end the sentences correctly (inhibition part). Half of the expected final words had a negative emotional valence, while the other half was neutral. The task was performed in a control condition (without suggestion) and with a hypnotic suggestion to decrease emotional reactivity. The results revealed that hypnotic suggestion (compared to the control condition) hastened response times on negative final words in the inhibition part, showing that hypnotic suggestion can enhance cognitive control over prepotent negative word responses in a sentence completion task. We suggest that this modulation stems from a reduction in the emotional relevance of the final words caused by the hypnotic suggestion. (shrink)