Reactive inhibition is a phrase coined by Clark L. Hull in his 1943 book titled Principles of Behavior.
He defined it as: Whenever any reaction is evoked in an organism there is left a condition or state which acts as a primary negative motivation in that it has an innate capacity to produce a cessation of the activity which produced the state.Reactive inhibition is typically studied in the context of drive reduction.
[5] Reactive inhibition may be important in everyday life during a process in which a decline in performance can be detrimental such as driving a car during rush hour.
By using a smart phone app, participants played a game in which two apples were falling from either side of the tree.
[8] It is commonly accepted that decreased inhibition abilities are a prominent aspect of the symptoms associated with ADHD.
For example, Torok et al. (2017) recorded learning capabilities in 180 adults using the Alternating Serial Reaction Time Test.
Specifically, they showed that significantly more learning had occurred than was perceived at the end of the task, for reactive inhibition had affected the individual over time.
They concluded that reactive inhibition may affect one’s rate of learning due to how it causes progressive decline within a task.
[2] For example, Rickard, Pan, and Albarracín present evidence that even well accepted psychological findings such as memory consolidation during sleep may be incorrect.
It may have existed at the end of learning before sleeping occurred, and thus caused seemingly lower memory scores.
Reactive inhibition is often not recognized as a factor of performance in learning based experiments and thus can lead to incorrect results.
[14] What is important within this task is the stop signal reaction time, which indicates how long it takes reactive inhibition to be triggered and thus for the action to be ceased.
The SST’s demands on attention and inhibition are relatively low and simple in nature, unlike many real life situations, which makes them distrusting of its results.
Using the simon task, researchers showed that inhibitory processes were significantly depleted in Parkinson’s patients who were withdrawing from their medications, and thus experiencing low levels of dopamine.
[21] One study has also shown that significant damage to the prefrontal cortex, particularly the right superior medial frontal region, can result in a lack of inhibitory control.
When this particular region was damaged patients relied more on last second reactive inhibition to avoid performing inappropriate behaviors.