Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 129, Issue 3, November 2008, Pages 332-339
Acta Psychologica

Heterogeneous inhibition processes involved in different facets of self-reported impulsivity: Evidence from a community sample

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2008.08.010Get rights and content

Abstract

Whiteside and Lynam (Whiteside, S. P., & Lynam, D. R. (2001). The Five Factor Model and impulsivity: Using a structural model of personality to understand impulsivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 30, 669–689) clarified the multifaceted nature of impulsivity by identifying four distinct facets of self-reported impulsive behaviors: urgency, (lack of) premeditation, (lack of) perseverance, and sensation seeking. Building on work by Bechara and Van der Linden (Bechara, A., & Van der Linden, M. (2005). Decision-making and impulse control after frontal lobe injuries. Current Opinion in Neurology, 18, 734–739), the main objective of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that perseverance and urgency map onto the two distinct inhibitory functions distinguished by Friedman and Miyake (Friedman, N. P., & Miyake, A. (2004). The relations among inhibition and interference control functions: A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 101–135): prepotent response inhibition and resistance to proactive interference. Participants (N = 126) completed the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale and three tasks: a recent-negatives task to assess proactive interference in working memory, and two Go/No-Go tasks at different paces, the slower of which also assessed task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs). Consistent with the hypothesis, TUTs were positively correlated with lack of perseverance, and multiple regressions revealed that urgency was specifically related to errors in prepotent response inhibition, and lack of perseverance to errors due to difficulties overcoming proactive interference.

Introduction

Impulsivity is an important construct in almost all major personality theories (Whiteside & Lynam, 2001) and plays a prominent role in numerous psychopathological states (Moeller, Barratt, Dougherty, Schmitz, & Swann, 2001). In particular, different aspects of impulsivity have been related to addictions (e.g., Tcheremissine, Lane, Cherek, & Pietras, 2003), heavy alcohol consumption (Cyders et al., 2007), borderline personality disorder (e.g., Paris, 2005), antisocial personality disorder (e.g., Barratt, Stanford, Kent, & Felthous, 1997), psychopathy (e.g., Miller, Flory, Lynam, & Leukefeld, 2003), Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (e.g., Schachar, Tannock, & Logan, 1993), conduct problems (e.g., Lynam & Miller, 2004), bipolar disorder (e.g., Swann et al., 2001, Swann et al., 2001), bulimia nervosa (e.g., Claes et al., 2006, Claes et al., 2005, Fischer et al., 2003), insomnia (e.g., Schmidt, Gay, & Van der Linden, 2008), and other problematic behaviors such as procrastination (e.g., Dewitte & Schouwenburg, 2002), risky sexual activities (e.g., Miller et al., 2003), compulsive buying (e.g., Billieux, Rochat, Rebetez, & Van der Linden, 2008), dependence on and problematic use of mobile phones (Billieux, Van der Linden, d’Acremont, Ceschi, & Zermatten, 2007), and tobacco craving (e.g., Billieux, Van der Linden, & Ceschi, 2007).

However, despite the widespread use of the concept of impulsivity, it is still poorly defined. In this context, several authors have underscored the need to consider impulsivity as a multifaceted construct (e.g., Enticott and Ogloff, 2006, Evenden, 1999, Whiteside and Lynam, 2001). In an attempt to delimit the facets underlying impulsivity, Whiteside and Lynam (2001) administered several widely used measures of impulsivity and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) (Costa & McCrae, 1992) to 437 undergraduate students. A factor analysis conducted on these impulsivity scales and on the facets of the NEO-PI-R related to impulsivity resulted in a four-factor solution, which was the basis for the creation of a scale called the UPPS Impulsive Behavior Scale. The four dimensions of impulsivity measured by the UPPS are (1) urgency, defined as the tendency to experience strong reactions, frequently under the condition of negative affect; (2) premeditation, defined as the tendency to take into account the consequences of an act before engaging in that act; (3) perseverance, defined as the ability to remain focused on a task that may be boring and/or difficult; and (4) sensation seeking, considered as a tendency to enjoy and pursue activities that are exciting, and openness to trying new experiences.

A growing number of studies based on Whiteside and Lynam’s (2001) conception of impulsivity have highlighted specific relationships between the various components of impulsivity and several psychopathological states and problematic behaviors: urgency may be more specifically related to borderline personality disorders (Miller et al., 2003, Whiteside and Lynam, 2003, Whiteside et al., 2005), tobacco craving (Billieux, Van der Linden, & Ceschi, 2007), compulsive buying (Billieux et al., 2008), bulimia nervosa (Claes et al., 2005, Fischer et al., 2003), and nighttime as well as daytime aspects of insomnia (Schmidt, Gay, & Van der Linden, 2008); lack of premeditation may be closely related to antisocial personality and psychopathic features (d’Acremont, 2005, Miller et al., 2003, Whiteside and Lynam, 2003, Whiteside et al., 2005); and lack of perseverance may represent a particularly important facet in the evaluation of predominantly inattentive subtypes of ADHD (d’Acremont, 2005, Miller et al., 2003, Whiteside and Lynam, 2001) and insomnia-related impairments in daytime functioning (Schmidt, Gay, & Van der Linden, 2008). Finally, sensation seeking could be associated with involvement in delinquent acts, drug and alcohol use, and risky sexual behaviors (e.g., Miller et al., 2003). More specifically, sensation seeking may be related to the frequency of engaging in risky behaviors, whereas urgency may be specifically related to problematic levels of engagement in those behaviors (Smith et al., 2007).

Inhibitory problems have recently attracted renewed interest in the assessment and comprehension of impulsivity (Bechara and Van der Linden, 2005, Enticott and Ogloff, 2006, Kertzman et al., 2006). Moreover, such problems may be related to a number of different problematic behaviors involving impulsivity such as ADHD (e.g., Barkley, 1997, Schachar et al., 1993), obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and/or trichotillomania (e.g., Chamberlain et al., 2006, Van der Linden et al., 2005), borderline personality disorder (e.g., Domes et al., 2006), alcoholism (e.g., Nigg et al., 2006, Noël et al., 2001), smoking (e.g., Krishnan-Sarin et al., 2006), and chronic cocaine use (Fillmore & Rusch, 2002).

However, despite interesting results suggesting that self-reported impulsivity is related to inhibition performance in laboratory tasks (e.g., Enticott et al., 2006, Keilp et al., 2005, Kooijmans et al., 2000, Marsh et al., 2002), several studies have found no such relationship (e.g., Claes et al., 2006, Horn et al., 2003, Lane et al., 2003, Reynolds et al., 2006). For instance, Reynolds et al. (2006) found a significant correlation between one dimension of self-reported impulsivity and commission errors in a Go/No-Go task, but no correlation was found between the different dimensions of self-reported impulsivity and the stop reaction time in a Go-Stop task. Furthermore, Keilp et al. (2005) reported that, among several executive performance variables, number of errors on a Go/No-Go task was the strongest correlate of a range of self-rated impulsive facets; on the other hand, using a different Go/No-Go task, Horn et al. (2003) found no significant correlation between commission errors and general impulsivity.

Several lines of thought could be proposed to explain these contradictory results concerning the relationship between impulsivity and inhibition. This lack of significant correlation could be due not only to the lack of consensus concerning the dimensions of impulsivity, but also to the misconceptions surrounding inhibition processes. Indeed, it is still debated in the literature whether inhibition (or executive functions in general) is a unitary construct or not. In this context, Friedman and Miyake (2004) performed an experiment to examine the relationships between tasks chosen to represent three theoretical inhibitory functions in 220 normal adults. The results of their latent variable analysis suggested that prepotent response inhibition was closely related to the ability to resist interference from irrelevant (distracting) information in the external environment (resistance to distracter interference), but both abilities were unrelated to resistance to proactive interference (i.e., the ability to resist the intrusion into memory of information that was previously relevant but has since become irrelevant).

Considering impulsivity as a multidimensional construct and inhibition as a multidetermined process should help us to disentangle the cognitive mechanisms associated with impulsivity. Based on this approach, the multifaceted model of impulsivity proposed by Whiteside and Lynam (2001) will be adopted to explore the relationships between impulsivity and two specific inhibition capacities. Within this theoretical framework, Bechara and Van der Linden (2005) (see also Van der Linden, Rochat & Billieux, 2006) recently proposed to relate the various facets of impulsivity to specific psychological processes. More specifically, they tentatively suggested that urgency may be related to the ability to deliberately suppress dominant, automatic or prepotent responses. Several studies have found that impulsive individuals have problems with tasks assessing prepotent response inhibition such as Go/No-Go tasks or stop-signal tasks (e.g., Enticott et al., 2006, Keilp et al., 2005, Logan et al., 1997). Bechara and Van der Linden (2005) further proposed that the lack of perseverance could be related to vulnerability to proactive interference. Thus, one way to tap into the processes at play in impulsivity, and more particularly in the “lack of perseverance” aspects of the construct, could consist of using modified tasks based on an item recognition paradigm (for a review, see Jonides & Nee, 2006) that specifically assesses resistance to proactive interference in working memory. Interestingly, rumination has been found to be related to deficient inhibition of previously relevant information in such tasks (Whitmer & Banich, 2007), extending previous findings highlighting the relationship between resistance to proactive interference and cognitive intrusions (Friedman & Miyake, 2004).

Another way of understanding impulsivity, and particularly the lack of perseverance dimension, may be the use of thought sampling methods to assess mind wandering or task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) during the execution of different activities. One such method involves interrupting participants during a task in which they have to indicate whether, at the moment just before the interruption, they felt their mind wandering (a drift of attention toward off-task thoughts) or whether their thoughts were related to the task (on-task thoughts or no thoughts). It has been suggested that mind wandering episodes involve executive control and a growing number of studies have found that TUTs interfere with task performance (for a review, see Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Considering our suggestions concerning the relationships between inhibition and impulsivity, we hypothesized that mind wandering may be related to lower perseverance and to difficulty in resisting proactive interference.

The first objective of this study was to examine the extent to which facets of impulsivity, measured with a self-reported questionnaire (UPPS), are related to performance on objective measures of inhibition. Following Bechara and Van der Linden’s (2005) suggestions (1) the urgency facet of impulsivity should be related to difficulties suppressing dominant responses, as assessed by a traditional Go/No-Go tasks with infrequent targets, and (2) the lack of perseverance facet should be related to the ability to overcome proactive interference in working memory, as assessed by a recent-negatives task. The second objective was to examine how attention drifting toward “off-task thoughts” or mind wandering, as assessed by the number of reported TUTs, may be related to the lack of perseverance component of impulsivity and to the related “resistance to proactive interference” mechanisms.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

Participants were volunteers and received no compensation for their participation. They were recruited by the first three authors and four student helpers by means of advertisements and personal contacts and through snowballing techniques. Exclusion criteria were any recent or ongoing major depressive episode, anxiety disorder or neurological disorder. Four subjects were excluded because they reported depressive episodes. Moreover, nine subjects were excluded because of the missing values.

Preliminary analyses

Cronbach’s α-coefficients, mean scores and standard deviations for the UPPS are presented in Table 1. The range of Cronbach’s α-coefficients (82–86) suggests that the subscales of the UPPS show excellent internal consistency. Mean scores and standard deviations on measures for all three tasks are presented in Table 1. Mean RT (and LogRT) in the SARTs showed no correlation with impulsivity or with TUTs, and will not be further reported here. In the RNT, the mean log reaction time (LogRT) was

Discussion

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between the four dimensions of impulsivity distinguished by Whiteside and Lynam (2001), specific inhibition processes, and mind wandering (TUTs) during a 9-min task. Following Bechara and Van der Linden (2005), we specifically hypothesized that urgency and lack of perseverance would map separately on the two inhibitory functions proposed by Friedman and Miyake (2004). Furthermore, we examined whether TUTs are related to impulsivity and

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the National Center for Affective Sciences, financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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