Citation

Barratt ES. Pers. Individ. Dif. 1983; 4(4): 387-391.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1983, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0191-8869(83)90004-1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

High-impulsive subjects often do say things on the spur of the moment and/or make up their minds quickly. The description of impulsivity as a personality trait involves a number of basic research questions including: 1. 1. From a psychometric viewpoint, how inclusive or broad is impulsivity as a personality trait?2. 2. How does impulsivity relate to other personality traits?3. 3. Is there a pattern of biological correlates of impulsivity that is distinct from other personality traits?4. 4. What is the relationship between cognitive and behavioral impulsivity?This paper addresses those four questions. Psychometric analysis of issues in impulsivity indicates the need for a distinction between broad and narrow impulsivity traits and further redefinition of the latter in terms of cognitive and motor components. This research has also shown that impulsiveness has an orthogonal relationship with measures of anxiety. In perceptual-motor tasks, high-impulsive subjects perform less efficiently and with greater variability on a wide range of these tasks, and in particular when the task involves responding to two or more sequential stimuli. High-impulsive subjects underproduce time intervals in time-judgment tasks; this and other findings suggest that high-impulsive subjects have a faster cognitive tempo than low-impulsive subjects. The interaction of impulsivity and anxiety in the performance of perceptual-motor tasks is also reflected in psychophysiological measures; differences in impulsivity are more evident with electrocortical measures and differences in anxiety are reflected in ANS measures while performing the tasks.