Performance and ERP components in the equiprobable go/no‐go task: Inhibition in children

The equiprobable go/no‐go task lacks the dominant go imperative found in the usual go/no‐go task, and hence we previously regarded it as involving little inhibition. However, children have relative difficulty with this task, and demonstrate large frontal no‐go N2s. We investigated whether this child N2 plays an inhibitory role, using performance measures to illuminate the link between N2 and inhibition. Forty children aged 8 to 13 were presented with four stimulus blocks each containing 75 go and 75 no‐go tone stimuli in random order. A temporal PCA with unrestricted varimax rotation quantified the mean go and no‐go ERP component amplitudes. Most identified components were differentially enhanced to go or no‐go as in adults, supporting a previously proposed differential processing schema. Between subjects, larger frontocentral no‐go N2bs were associated with fewer commission errors. Hence, the no‐go N2b in this paradigm can be interpreted as an individual marker of inhibition in children.