How does Go/No-Go training lead to food devaluation? Separating the effects of response inhibition and response valence.

Task instructions either indicated that no-go responses had negative valence (“do not take”) and that go responses had positive valence (“take”), or identified no-go responses as positively valenced (“keep”) and go as negatively valenced (“throw away”). The results show a strong effect of the evaluative framing of go and no-go responses on chocolate evaluations, but no effect of motor inhibition: Chocolate stimuli were devalued following pairings with a negatively valenced response, regardless of whether this response entailed motor inhibition (no-go) or motor excitation (go).

These findings align best with an inferential account of GNG training, indicating that devaluation effects critically depend on inferential processes regarding motor response valence. GNG training procedures may, therefore, be optimized by disambiguating the valence of go and no-go motor responses prior to training.