Overcoming expectations: Electrophysiological effects of inhibitory control demands in a non-linguistic task on subsequent semantic relatedness judgements

Rataj, Karolina; Kakuba, Patrycja; van Heuven, Walter J.B.

Abstract

This event-related potentials study focussed on whether extensive practice of inhibitory control in a conflict task affects semantic processing/decisions in a subsequent language task. Participants took part in two 40-min sessions of the Simon task with either low or high inhibitory demands, each followed by a relatedness judgement task with strongly related, weakly related, and unrelated word pairs. The N400 in the relatedness judgement task was unaffected by inhibitory control demands of the preceding Simon task. However, the late frontal positivity for weakly related pairs was enhanced relative to the other two conditions only after the low inhibitory demands Simon task, indicating a difference in the inhibition of the expected strongly related words between the two sessions. This suggests that the mechanisms underlying semantic facilitation for weakly related pairs operate at the decision stage and these can be modulated by inhibitory control demands in a preceding non-linguistic conflict task.

Citation

Rataj, K., Kakuba, P., & van Heuven, W. J. (2025). Overcoming expectations: Electrophysiological effects of inhibitory control demands in a non-linguistic task on subsequent semantic relatedness judgements. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2024.2440909

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 5, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jan 6, 2025
• Publication Date: Jan 6, 2025
• Deposit Date: Jan 14, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 7, 2026
• Journal: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
• Print ISSN: 2327-3798
• Electronic ISSN: 2327-3801
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2024.2440909
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/44078442
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23273798.2024.2440909