Effects of stimulus-stimulus compatibility and stimulus-response compatibility on response inhibition

Previous studies demonstrated that interference control in stimulus-stimulus compatibility tasks slowed down stopping in the stop signal task (e.g., Kramer, A. F., Humphrey, D. G., Larish, J. F., Logan, G. D., & Strayer, D. L. (1994). Aging and inhibition: beyond a unitary view of inhibitory processing in attention. psychology and aging, 9, 491-512). In the present study, the impact of stimulus-stimulus compatibility and stimulus-response compatibility on response inhibition is further investigated. In Experiment 1, the stop signal task was combined with a traditional horizontal Simon task and with a vertical variant. For both dimensions, stopping responses was prolonged in incompatible trials, but only when the previous trial was compatible. In Experiment 2, the Simon task was combined with a spatial Stroop task in order to compare the effects of stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response compatibility. The results demonstrated that both types of compatibility influenced stopping in a similar way. These findings are in favor of the hypothesis that response inhibition in the stop signal task and interference control in conflict tasks rely on similar mechanisms.