Reactive control in suicide ideators and attempters: An examination of the congruency sequence effect in cognitive and emotional Simon tasks

Reactive control is the cognitive ability to adjust thoughts and behaviors when encountering conflict. We investigated how this ability to manage conflict and stress distinguishes suicidal from nonsuicidal individuals. The hypothesis was that suicidal individuals would show poorer reactive control when faced with conflict generated by emotional than neutral stimuli. Hence, individuals with a lifetime history of suicide ideation or attempt and nonsuicidal controls were tested in cognitive and emotional Simon tasks. We examined the congruency sequence effect (CSE) in the Simon tasks as an indication of the efficiency of reactive control in resolving conflict. Whereas controls demonstrated significant CSEs in both tasks, suicide attempters showed a significant CSE in the cognitive task but not in the emotional task. Suicide ideators, on the other hand, displayed marginally significant CSEs in both tasks. Comparing groups with pairwise comparison demonstrated that the difference in CSE was significant only in the emotional task between attempters and controls. Our findings of attempters’ inefficiency in adjusting reactive control during the emotional task reflect cognitive inflexibility in coping with conflicting situations during which suicidal individuals become vulnerable to suicide attempts in states of negative emotion.