Is Inhibitory Control Related to Conflict in Reasoning: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test a belief-bias effect on reasoning in relation to inhibitory control functions and whether inhibition would be activated on conflict syllogisms. A total of 85 university students (78 % women, Mage = 20. 51, SD = 2. 90) participated in the study. We measured three types of inhibition and used the Brown-Peterson task and the Cued Recall task to measure proactive interference resistance, the Eriksen flanker letters and arrows task to measure distractor interference control, and the Spatial and Numerical Stroop task to measure prepotent response inhibition. We administered a syllogistic reasoning task containing no-conflict and conflict syllogisms saturated by socially relevant content. We found a typical belief-bias effect on invalid/believable conflict syllogisms, and accordingly all three types of inhibition accounted for reasoning performance only on valid/unbelievable conflict syllogisms, where belief-bias was not registered, indicating an inverse relation of bias and inhibition.