Proactive and Reactive Inhibition Are Dissociable: Evidence from Go/No-Go and Stop-Signal Tasks

Background: Proactive and reactive inhibition are key components of inhibitory control that support flexible, goal-directed behaviour. Proactive inhibition involves the anticipatory regulation of motor responses based on contextual demands, whereas reactive inhibition refers to the rapid cancellation of an already initiated action following an external stop signal. Although these processes are often grouped within a unified inhibitory control framework, emerging evidence suggests they may rely on partially distinct cognitive and neural mechanisms.Methods: This pilot study examined whether individual differences in proactive inhibition are associated with reactive inhibition performance. Fifteen healthy young adults (M = 23.4 years) completed a Go/No-Go Task (GNGT) and a Stop-Signal Task (SST) in a counterbalanced order. Proactive inhibition was indexed using NoGo accuracy, and reactive inhibition was indexed using Stop-trial accuracy.Results: Pearson correlation analyses revealed a moderate negative association between NoGo accuracy and Stop-trial accuracy (r = −0.43), which did not reach statistical significance (p = .108).Conclusion: Although preliminary, the observed pattern is consistent with accounts proposing a dissociation between action restraint and action cancellation. These findings highlight the importance of assessing proactive and reactive inhibition as potentially separable components of executive control.Keywords: proactive inhibition; reactive inhibition; go/no-go task; stop-signal task; inhibitory control