Inhibitory control is the human-made concept in cognitive psychology denoting the executive capacity to deliberately suppress a dominant, automatic, or prepotent response in favor of a less automatic but more goal-appropriate one. Its parameters are: response inhibition (the ability to stop an ongoing action), interference control (the ability to ignore distracting or competing stimuli), and overlearned-response suppression (the ability to override habitual behavior). It persists through standardized paradigms (Go/No-Go, Stop-Signal, Stroop tasks), institutional clinical practice (ADHD and executive-function assessment), and the research literature that maps its neural substrates in the prefrontal cortex. [formal: inhibitio | substrate: mind | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
inhibitory-control
Inhibitory control is the human-made concept in cognitive psychology denoting the executive capacity to deliberately suppress a dominant, automatic, or prepotent response in favor of a less automatic but more goal-appropriate one. Its para…
Definition
Why it is in scope
A human-made psychological construct describing the capacity to suppress dominant, automatic, or prepotent responses, thoughts, or actions. Built to persist through psychological theory, experimental paradigms, and disciplinary practice.
Names and aliases
- inhibitory-controlen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrxxjcex04ejsoac2glqyx8hINSTANCE_OF →
Inhibitory control is a specific kind of executive function — the capacity to suppress dominant or automatic responses. A competent cognitive scientist would call inhibitory control 'an executive function'. Nearest kind: executive-function (not working-memory or attentional-control). PIN: INSTANCE_OF in the sense of kind-of membership.
- cmrp6yh8g06g3d1nl406bo1weDEPENDS_ON →
Inhibitory control requires actively maintaining the 'stop' or 'override' signal in working memory to suppress a dominant response. Remove working memory — the capacity to hold the inhibition goal online — and inhibitory control cannot operate. Object-level removal test (Law 8b), not meta-level.
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Record identity
- Created
- Jul 23, 2026, 11:56 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 140b29131cc4c6048a7730c2c002a6500d4277b343cd7a86f994cfde651aff1d