Proactive cues facilitate faster action reprogramming, but not stopping, in a response-selective stop signal task

The ability to stop simple ongoing actions has been extensively studied using the stop signal task, but less is known about inhibition in more complex scenarios. Here we used a task requiring bimanual responses to go stimuli, but selective inhibition of only one of those responses following a stop signal. We assessed how proactive cues affect the nature of both the responding and stopping processes, and the well-documented stopping delay (interference effect) in the continuing action following successful stopping. In this task, estimates of the speed of inhibition based on a simple-stopping model are inappropriate, and have produced inconsistent findings about the effects of proactive control on motor inhibition. We instead used a multi-modal approach, based on improved methods of detecting and interpreting partial electromyographical responses and the recently proposed SIS (simultaneously inhibit and start) model of selective stopping behaviour. Our results provide clear and converging evidence that proactive cues reduce the stopping delay effect by slowing bimanual responses and speeding unimanual responses, with a negligible effect on the speed of the stopping process.