ReviewBiological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society2025
Inhibitory control tests in non-human animals: validity, reliability, and perspectives.
Review in Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cognitive Assessment for Neuropsychological Impairments in Dogs (CANID): An Efficient, Repeatable, and Sensitive Evaluation for Age-related Cognitive Dysfunction.Research square · 2026Article
- Exploring the relationship between inhibitory control and coping behaviour in horses.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- A cortico-subthalamic circuit rapidly engages and releases inhibition of specific movements depending on the environmental context.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Differential captivity and experiential conditions and its impact on the behaviour and cognition of Picasso triggerfish (Rhinecanthus aculeatus).Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Cortico-basal ganglia dynamics of global and selective response inhibition in humans.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Inhibitory control, the ability to control impulsive or pre-learned behaviour in order to reach a more rewarding goal, is essential in many aspects of normal life. In non-human animals, better inhibitory control performances have been associated with a larger brain, better problem-solving skills, and fitness benefits. This crucial cognitive ability has been studied in a wide range of fields (psychology, neurosciences, animal cognition) and has been tested in several animal classes from insects to mammals. Unfortunately, unlike in human test psychology, the common paradigms designed to measure inhibitory control in non-human animals often suffer from a lack of validity and reliability and have yielded mixed results. Therefore, the nature of inhibitory control, either defined as a common ability or a suite of distinct processes, is still debated. Besides, the evolutionary processes shaping the variation in inhibitory control, often tested using a single task, are still poorly understood and the relative influences of ecological, anatomical or social factors as evolutionary drivers of this ability remain unclear. Finally, it is only recently that researchers have focused efforts on the factors necessary for the evolution of inhibitory control, that is individual variation in inhibitory control performance, heritability of this trait and fitness benefits. Hence, our main objective herein is to conduct a review of the existing literature to discuss conceptual and methodological challenges faced by researchers wanting to study inhibitory control in animals. We then suggest tools to tackle these challenges and propose a framework to build a valid and reliable measure of inhibitory processes. Next, we describe the requirements to study the selective pressures involved in this cognitive process in order to have a better understanding of its evolutionary underpinnings. We finally consider the future of interspecies comparative studies of inhibitory control.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.