Personality and inhibitory deficits in the stop-signal task: the mediating role of Gray’s anxiety and impulsivity

The stop-signal task has become one of the most important paradigms for the study of general inhibitory problems in children and adults. The objective of this research has been to study the relationship between personality and performance in the stop-signal task in a sample of female undergraduates. Subjects completed the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and the Spielberger trait-anxiety measure. They also completed the stop-task using the tracking method to estimate stop-signal reaction time (SSRT). As expected, higher scores on the Sensitivity to Reward scale and lower scores on the Sensitivity to Punishment scale were associated with general inhibitory deficits. However, the other personality measures were not correlated with SSRT. Discussion concentrates on highlighting the importance of this task for measuring inhibitory deficits, and on the possibility of the existence of different pathways to demonstrate them.