Activity inhibition: A valid linguistic marker of executive functions?

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Oliver Schultheiss
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology ; General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 512631537

This project tests whether activity inhibition (AI) -- the frequency with which speakers or writers use the negation not -- is a valid linguistic marker of (a) the inhibition of prepotent actions, thoughts and emotions in response to unexpected or threatening events and (b) the reorienting of attention to such events. AI, whose predictive validity for behavioral and health outcomes has been documented in research since the 1960s, has been hypothesized to inhibit motivational impulses, but also shown to be linked to attentional orienting to stimuli presented in the left visual field, suggesting a right-hemisphere involvement. The proposed research argues that both accounts are right, informed by a cognitive-neuroscience literature that shows that inhibition of actions, thoughts, and emotions as well as attentional reorienting to unexpected or emotionally charged stimuli engage the right prefrontal cortex, possibly in a functionally integrated manner. It is also informed by research that suggests the reuse of the brain’s inhibition network by the use of negation in reading or writing sentences. In 7 studies, this project will test the idea that AI reflects the responsiveness of the inhibition and attentional reorienting functions. More specifically, it aims at (1) showing that as AI is increased or decreased experimentally, so are inhibition and attentional reorienting, (2) replicating and extending the association of AI and attentional orienting observed in earlier studies, (3) determining how strongly the inhibition of actions, thoughts, and emotions is associated with AI, (4) further expanding (to other words) and specifying (for relevant sentential contexts) the measurement of AI through text analysis and experimental validation, (5) examining the role of the source text (speeches, picture stories, essays) on AI’s validity, and (6) exploring the convergent and discriminant validity of AI vis-à-vis measures of other executive functions and of interpersonal perspective-taking and self-report measures of self-control and inhibition.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants