So I started doing my thesis at York University in the 2010/2011 school year under the supervision of Dr. DeSouza at his lab called the joelab. Basically I was supposed to do my thesis on inhibition as it relates to certain types of criminal behaviour. However, I kind of missed my chance to talk with Dr. Turner who was doing a study related to what I wanted to study, so now I'm doing my thesis on inhibition as it relates to gambling, musical/bilingual training, and gaming.
Ok, so basically we're using an antisaccade paradigm to measure people's inhibition. For those of you who don't know what that means, basically we get people look at a screen and fixate on a certain point (middle of the screen) where a small square appears. The square then moves either to the left or to the right after a fixation period of 200ms to 1500ms. The square turns either red or green before it moves and the fixation time is calculated from the moment the square changes colour to the moment it moves. The subject is instructed to either look toward the square (prosaccade) or look away from the square (antisaccade) depending on which colour the square turned. So for example, in one trial the if the square turns red, the subject is instructed to look towards the square, and if it turns green, the subject is instructed to look away from the square.
Now you might be wondering, "how does staring at little colour changing, moving squares measure inhibition?" Well the idea is that humans, along with other animals, have a automatic response to look toward a moving stimulus within their field of vision. Think of it this way, when you see something moving out of the corner of your eye, you look toward it, not away from it. So, the antisaccade task places a demand on the subject to stop the automatic response of looking toward a peripherally moving stimulus and make an active decision to look away from it.
Alright, so now lets get into the real question. Why might people with bilingual/musical experience have differences in their preparation for the antisaccade vs. the prosaccade? Meaning, why would these people have a difference in the time it takes them to make a decision for the antisaccade vs. the prosaccade? Well, the prosaccade should take very little time as it is an automatic response. So one would expect that prosaccades preparation times would be minimal for anyone, regardless of bilingual/musical experience. Its the antisaccade that's interesting because it not only requires an active inhibition of an automatic response but also a decision to carry out an action contrary to that automatic response. Basically, when making an antisaccade, we'd be using higher brain functions rather than simply autonomic/routine responses.
People with bilingual/musical training are specifically trained to do multiple things at once. In case of bilingual training, one would expect that anytime a person talks in the language they use least often, they would have to inhibit their impulse to use the language which they use more often. I know I have this problem sometimes when I speak Urdu with my mother. Even though Urdu is my native language (I'm South Asian and was raised in Pakistan) I still find that I sometimes it takes more effort to speak in Urdu rather than English because I only speak Urdu maybe 20% of the time and in under very specific situations (i.e. when talking to an elder South Asian family member). Now this ties into our previous discussion about antisaccades and inhibition because I have to inhibit my automatic tendency to want to speak in English anytime I speak in Urdu. Therefore, since I do this almost on a daily basis (for at least 20% of the time that I am using verbal communication), one would expect that I would be at least a little bit better at tasks that require the use of inhibitory control because I have more practice using inhibition on a daily basis. Same can be said about people who have musical training. However, their training would be slightly different because they are specifically trained to ignore stimuli in their peripheral field of vision, (i.e. if a person is playing a musical piece off of a score they will likely ignore any stimuli that enter their peripheral field of vision because their musical task requires them to do so).
Well, now that I've talked all about that cool stuff, I think I'll go play a video game (Dragon Age 2) and see if this inhibition control stuff actually works when something enters my peripheral field of vision (gaming is another variable I'll be looking at... how cool is that?! Psychology and gaming together! ...you know you like it....)
If anyone's interested in learning more about what an antisaccade task or a similar study to mine is all about, you can check out this article.
Brown, M. R. G., Vilis, T., Everling, S. (2007). Frontoparietal Activation With Preparation for Antisaccades. Journal of Neurophysiology, 98, 1751-1762. doi: doi:10.1152/jn.00460.2007.
