Inhibition in Cognitive / Executive Control

Imagine yourself driving home. You drive quickly but safely, while listening to the news coming from the radio. However, when you approach a red traffic light, you are required to focus your attention on the traffic. To achieve this goal, you engage cognitive/executive control processes, which allows you to inhibit irrelevant thoughts and actions (e.g., listening to the news). We are interested in the inhibition processes you engage in. Specifically, we investigate how many different forms of inhibition can be distinguished, to what extent these different forms of inhibition interact, and whether they decline or are preserved in older age. We also study the relations between inhibition, working memory, and reasoning.