Urges During Impulse Control: Implications for Motivation Science
Clayton A. Taylor
Department of Psychology
Faculty Supervisor: Ezequiel Morsella
In reaction time tasks, participants are often asked to rate their urge to err, that is, how strong their urge was to make a mistake when responding. The ratings are made on a trial-by-trial basis and with an 8-point scale. It has been proposed that these ratings are based on participants’ observations of their own, overt response times. To test this hypothesis, we developed a variation of the classic “go/no go” task in which participants rated their urge to err on a trial-by-trial basis. Critically, urges on this task arose on trials in which participants had to withhold responding. This finding suggests that, at least in this task, the trial-by-trial urges are not based solely on participants observing their overt responses. We discuss this finding in the context of motivation science and a three-stage model of conscious processing.