Abstract: Objective To study the correlation between inhibitory control (including response inhibition and interference inhibition) and academic achievements of clinical medicine students, so as to explore new ways to improve academic achievements. Methods From August to September 2021, a cluster sampling method was used, 64 students majoring in clinical medicine enrolled in 2020 in Air Force Medical University participated in current study. The subjective and objective academic performances of each medical student were measured by the academic achievement questionnaire. The Go/No-go task and stop signal task were used to measure the level of proactive and reactive response inhibition, respectively; the Stroop task was used to measure the level of interference inhibition. Spearman or Pearson correlation analysis were used to analyze the correlation between the three task performances of medical students and their academic achievements. Results The results showed that the Go/No-go performance was significant related to the academic cognition (r=0.38, P=0.002), academic will (r=0.38, P=0.002) and academic behavior (r=0.32, P=0.010), but was not associated with the academic ranking (r=-0.01, P=0.950), the number of certificates (r=0.09, P=0.494), the number of scholarships (r=-0.17, P=0.173) and the number of awards (r=0.18, P=0.161). In addition, the stop signal and Stroop task performances were not significantly correlated with either the subjective or objective academic performances of medical students. Conclusions Medical students with higher proactive response inhibition have a higher perception of the importance of learning, stronger willpower to learn, and more time and energy invested in their studies.

Key words: Students,medical, Inhibitory control, Academic achievement