ABSTRACT
Introduction
Claims about inhibitory processes in the prefrontal cortex are generally supported by evidence of inhibitory failures. Such failures are considered to occur when a highly prepotent action – one with a high prior probability of being appropriate – is selected instead of a more contextually appropriate, goal-directed response. Patterns of inhibitory failure are most often reported in human subjects with frontal lobe damage, in human infants and young children, and in normal subjects under cognitive load (or distraction). We argue that in many of these cases, a simpler account of the data would characterize the system at fault as a working memory system, and not as an inhibitory module per se.
