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Investigating the characteristics of “not responding”: backward crosstalk in the PRP paradigm with forced vs. free no-go decisions

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Abstract

Have you ever thought about what it means not to act? Basically, most people think about nonactions (or “not responding”) as depending on the existence of a pre-activated response which is then inhibited. The main problem when investigating the characteristics of such no-go responses is that they do not provide reaction times. Importantly, Miller (Psychol Res 70:484–493, 2006) recently showed that in a dual-task paradigm, forced go/no-go decisions in the secondary task lead to a backward crosstalk effect (BCE) in the reaction times of the primary task. Based on this experimental setup, we conducted three experiments to investigate the characteristics of “not responding.” The goal of Experiments 1 and 2 was to compare forced-choice and free-choice no-go responses. In both experiments, we only found a BCE when participants were forced not to respond. We interpret these findings as a first hint that the BCE is not due to an active inhibition of a pre-activated response tendency. Rather, we assume that it is caused by an automatic activation of specific response features when merely perceiving the secondary stimulus (Hommel, J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 24:1368–1384, 1998). In the forced-choice condition, the stimulus unambiguously announces a no-go response. By contrast, this is not the case in the free-choice condition as here the stimulus only signals participants to freely decide to “go” or “not to go.” Therefore, we tested in Experiment 3 rather directly if merely perceiving a stimulus unambiguously announcing a “no-go” causes a BCE. The results confirmed this. Overall, our results suggest that no-go responses do not differ conceptually from go responses.

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Notes

  1. In the forced-choice condition, 0.1 % of all trials were classified as “short-IRI” trials, 2.9 % as RT1 outliers, and 0.0 % as RT2 outliers. 5.3 % of the trials were excluded due to errors in T1, 2.2 % due to errors in T2. In the free-choice condition 7.8 % of all trials were classified as “short-IRI” trials, 1.2 % as RT1 outliers, and 3.5 % as RT2 outliers. 4.1 % of the trials were excluded due to errors in T1, 0.0 % due to errors in T2 (as it was not possible to commit errors in the free-choice condition). Some trials were excluded due to more than one criterion.

  2. In the forced-choice condition, one participant was excluded because in 55 % of the trials (s)he responded erroneously to S1. In the free-choice condition, two participants were excluded due to their very high “short-IRI” rate (overall 99 %/83 %) which led additionally to missing values in several cells of the design. One participant was excluded because (s)he chose the no-go response only in 15 % of all trials and a fourth participant because her/his mean IRIs exceeded the condition mean by more than 2 SDs.

  3. In detail, 4.7 % of all trials were classified as “short-IRI” trials, 1.3 % as RT1 outliers, and 0.1 % as RT2 outliers. 2.6 % of the trials were excluded due to errors in T1, 3.0 % due to errors in T2. Some trials were excluded due to more than one criterion.

  4. Four participants were excluded because in the free-choice trials they chose one of the two R2 options (go/no-go) in less than 10 % of all trials. This led to missing values in one or more cells of the design. Three participants were excluded mainly due to their very high “short-IRI” rate (ranging from 52 % in forced-choice trials up to 89 % in free-choice trials) which (for two participants) led to missing values in several cells as well. Another two participants were excluded because their mean IRIs (up to overall 850 ms) exceeded the condition mean by more than 2 SDs.

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Acknowledgement

The research reported here was conducted in partial fulfillment of a PhD thesis by Eva Röttger. This work was supported by grants of the German Research Foundation (HA 5447/11-1) and of the Graduate School “Managing Diversity and Transition-Vielfalt und Wandel gestalten” of the Human Sciences Faculty, University of Cologne. We thank Markus Janczyk and a second anonymous reviewer for many helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Cologne, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931, Cologne, Germany

    Eva Röttger & Hilde Haider

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  1. Eva Röttger
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  2. Hilde Haider
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Correspondence to Eva Röttger.

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Röttger, E., Haider, H. Investigating the characteristics of “not responding”: backward crosstalk in the PRP paradigm with forced vs. free no-go decisions. Psychological Research 81, 596–610 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0772-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0772-3

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