[EN]Cognitive and neural models have proposed the
existence of a single inhibitory process that regulates behavior
and depends on the right frontal operculum (rFO). The aim of
this study was to make a contribution to the ongoing debate as
to whether inhibition is a single process or is composed of
multiple, independent processes. Here, within a single para digm, we assessed the links between two inhibitory phenom ena—namely, resistance to involuntary visual capture by
abrupt onsets and resolving of spatial stimulus–response con flict. We did so by conducting three experiments, two involv ing healthy volunteers (Exps. 1 and 3), and one with the help
of a well-documented patient, R.J., with selectively weakened
inhibition following a lesion of the rFO. The results suggest
that resistance to capture and stimulus–response conflict are
independent, because (a) additive effects were found (Exps. 1
and 3), (b) capture did not correlate with compatibility effects
(Exp. 1), (c) dual tasking affected the two phenomena differently (Exp. 3), and (d) a dissociation was found between
the two in patient R.J. (Exp. 2). However, the results also
show that these two phenomena may share some processing
components, given that (a) both were affected in patient R.J.,
but to different degrees (Exp. 2), and (b) increasing the diffi culty of dual tasking produced an increasingly negative cor relation between capture and compatibility (Exp. 3), which
suggests that when resources are withdrawn from the control
of the former, they are used to control the latter.
