Cognitive inhibition

Cognitive inhibition refers to the mind's ability to tune out stimuli that are irrelevant to the task/process at hand or to the mind's current state. Cognitive inhibition can be done either in whole or in part, intentionally or otherwise. Cognitive inhibition in particular can be observed in many instances throughout specific areas of cognitive science.

The early models of what would become the study and concept of cognitive inhibition were developed by Sigmund Freud. Inhibition was believed to play two primary roles: the prevention of unwanted thoughts or behaviors, and the repression of experiences from infancy and childhood. Freud believed cognitive inhibition was not just a lack of awareness to stimuli but an active process, requiring a constant energy expenditure.

Other early theories of cognitive inhibition focused on its central developmental mechanisms and were founded by Luria and Vygotsky, two Russian psychologists. They proposed that children acquire control of behavior and thought through internalized speech, and that they consciously exhibit a cognitively inhibitory process in order to regulate their own behavior. Cognitive inhibition was thought to develop as mental control over behavior developed.

During the past 30 years inhibitory mechanisms such as cognitive inhibition have not been particularly prominent in developmental psychology, but currently they are undergoing a revival in the study of inefficient inhibition (explored in a later section) and resource limitations.

Cognitive inhibition can be seen at work during studies in developmental psychology. An experiment done by Friedman and Leslie explained children's performance in the false belief task as relying on a critical inhibitory process. What this demonstrated is that reaching the age of 3 or 4 triggers cognitive inhibition ability formation. The idea is that children who are 3 or 4 can suppress information from their cognitive experience in order to evaluate a situation from another's point of view. This is very important developmentally as it may interact with the formation of empathy: cognitive inhibition cannot be so great as to completely block one's experiences while evaluating another point of view, but must be strong enough to enable an accurate representation of that point of view. Other elements of cognitive inhibition that are studied in developmental psychology include memory formation or memory inhibition. It has been demonstrated that intentional inhibition of memory commitment is not fully developed until adulthood, and is very difficult for children to accomplish. This illustrates the fact that cognitive inhibition tasks, such as those in memory processing, are a gradually acquired skill rather than instinctual. Other cognitive functions that are developed gradually throughout childhood include exercising self-control over retained representational structures of information and quickly adapting cognitive processing to changing behavioral situations. Both of these functions were determined to be present throughout development, but not at full capacity until young adulthood. Evidently, the ability to intentionally ignore irrelevant details and to focus attention and cognitive ability on more relevant details is not present in young children and is a highly developmentally-related process.

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