The Stroop Task Sex Difference: Evolved Inhibition or Color Naming?

Previous research shows that women outperform men in the classic Stroop task, but it is not known why this difference occurs. There are currently two main hypotheses: (1) women have enhanced verbal abilities, and (2) women show greater inhibition. In two Stroop experiments, we examined the Inhibition hypothesis by adopting a procedure, often used in visual cognition paradigms, that induces a particular inhibitory component.

The irrelevancy of the inter-trial interval in delay-discounting experiments on an animal model of ADHD.

Delay discounting involves choosing between a small, immediate reward, and a larger but delayed one. As the delay between choice and large reward gets longer, people with ADHD tend to become impulsive faster than controls, indicated by a switch in preference from the large to the smaller reward. Choosing the smaller reward when the larger is considered reward maximizing is labeled impulsive behaviour.

Effect of Schedule-Induced Behavior on Responses of Spontaneously Hypertensive and Wistar-Kyoto Rats in a Delay-Discounting Task: A Preliminary Report.

Delay discounting is the loss of the subjective value of an outcome as the time to its delivery increases. It has been suggested that organisms can become more tolerant of this delay when engaging in schedule-induced behaviors. Schedule-induced behaviors are those that develop at a high rate during intermittent reinforcement schedules without the need of arranged contingency to the reinforcer, and they have been considered as a model of compulsivity.

Sex Differences on the Go/No-Go Test of Inhibition.

Parental investment theory suggests that women, due to greater investment in child rearing, can be more choosy than men when considering a potential mate. A corollary to this is that women should possess greater inhibition abilities compared to men in contexts related to sex and reproduction. This notion has found support from the inhibition literature demonstrating that while women do indeed show greater inhibition on tasks that include a social aspect, no such effect is found on cognitive tasks that do not possess a social component.

Logical fallacies in animal model research.

Background: Animal models of human behavioural deficits involve conducting experiments on animals with the hope of gaining new knowledge that can be applied to humans. This paper aims to address risks, biases, and fallacies associated with drawing conclusions when conducting experiments on animals, with focus on animal models of mental illness.

Conclusions: Researchers using animal models are susceptible to a fallacy known as false analogy, where inferences based on assumptions of similarities between animals and humans can potentially lead to an incorrect conclusion.