The ability to mitigate interference is of central importance to cognition. Previous research has provided conflicting accounts about whether operations that resolve interference are singular in character or form a family of functions. Here, we examined the relationship between interference-resolution processes acting upon working memory representations versus responses. We combined multiple forms of interference into a single paradigm by merging a directed-forgetting task, which induces proactive interference, with a stop signal task that taps response inhibition processes. The results demonstrated that proactive interference and response inhibition produced distinct behavioral signatures that did not interact. By contrast, combining two different measures of response inhibition by merging a goo-go task variant and a stop signal produced over-additive behavioral interference, demonstrating that different forms of response inhibition tap the same processes. However, not all forms of response conflict interacted, suggesting that inhibition-related functions acting upon response selection are dissociable from those acting upon response inhibition. These results suggest that inhibition-related functions for memory and responses are dissociable.
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