Is the letter cancellation task a suitable index of ego depletion? Empirical and conceptual issues

Abstract

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.