PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Du, Yue
AU  - Forrence, Alexander D.
AU  - Metcalf, Delaney M.
AU  - Haith, Adrian M.
TI  - Action inhibition revisited: Stopping is not faster than going
AID  - 10.1101/2022.06.29.497798
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.06.29.497798
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/07/03/2022.06.29.497798.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/07/03/2022.06.29.497798.full
AB  - We often need to swiftly abort a prepared response at the last moment before it is initiated. Our ability to abort a planned response is thought to be a fundamental facet of action control that is distinguished by its rapid speed, and is enabled by a specialized neural mechanism. This narrative has, however, largely been established based on experiments in which there is much greater urgency to abort an action than there is to generate an action. Here, we demonstrate that, under conditions of matched urgency, the speed at which participants are able to abort an action is comparable to the speed at which they can initiate an action. Our results challenge the prevailing view that stopping behaviors have a privileged status. We suggest, instead, that action initiation may often be systematically delayed to allow time to abort an action if needed.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.