Attentional bias on motor control: is motor inhibition influenced by attentional reorienting?

Motor inhibition and attentional processing are tightly linked. Recent neurophysiological studies have shown that both processes might rely on similar cognitive and neural mechanisms (Wessel and Aron, Neuron 93:259–280, 2017). However, it remains unclear whether attentional reorientation influences inhibition of a subsequent action. Therefore, we combined two tasks that are commonly used in the motor inhibition and visual attention reorientation field [respectively: the stop-signal task (Logan and Cowan, Psychol Rev 91:295–327, 1984) and the Posner endogenous cueing paradigm (Posner, Q J Exp Psychol 32(1):3–25, 1980)] to investigate how different aspects of visual attention modulate subsequent voluntary inhibition. Our results showed an increase in stopping-reaction time after a reorientation of attention only. This suggests a specific impairment of inhibitory control when a reorientation of visual attention is needed. These findings support the idea of a selective influence of attention reorientation on subsequent motor inhibition (stop signal). This may be linked to the “circuit breaker” hypothesis, proposing that attention reorientation toward an unexpected event “resets” the ongoing processes to allow the analysis of the potentially behaviorally relevant visual events (Corbetta et al., Neuron 58(3):306–324, 2008).