Is the Letter Cancellation Task a Suitable Index of Ego Depletion?: Empirical and Conceptual Issues

The aim was to quantify ego depletion and measure its effect on inhibitory control. Adults (N = 523) received the letter "e" cancellation ego depletion task and were subsequently tested on Stroop task performance. Difficulty of the cancellation task was systematically manipulated by modify...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social psychology (Göttingen, Germany) Germany), 2019-09, Vol.50 (5-6), p.345-354
Main Authors: Wimmer, Marina C., Dome, Lenard, Hancock, Peter J. B., Wennekers, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cognitive Control
Ego
Experimental Replication
Female
Human
Letters (Alphabet)
Letters (Correspondence)
Male
Sentences
Task Complexity
Task performance
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Summary:The aim was to quantify ego depletion and measure its effect on inhibitory control. Adults (N = 523) received the letter "e" cancellation ego depletion task and were subsequently tested on Stroop task performance. Difficulty of the cancellation task was systematically manipulated by modifying the text from semantically meaningful to non-meaningful sentences and words (Experiment 1) and by increasing ego depletion rule complexity (Experiment 2). Participants' performance was affected by both text and rule manipulations. There was no relation between ego depletion task performance and subsequent Stroop performance. Thus, irrespective of the difficulty of the ego depletion task, Stroop performance was unaffected. The widely used cancellation task may not be a suitable inducer of ego depletion if ego depletion is considered as a lack of inhibitory control.
ISSN:1864-9335
2151-2590
DOI:10.1027/1864-9335/a000393