Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 23, 2026

Measuring Attentional Biases for Threat in Children and Adults
Published on: October 19, 2014
Attentional enhancement to NoGo stimuli in anxious children
1Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. l.baving@psych.azu.nl
Objective:
To measure neurophysiological correlates of inhibition in children with anxiety disorders.
Method:
Anxiety-disordered children and healthy control children (11 years of age) performed a cued Continuous Performance Test (CPT-AX). Event-related potentials following NoGo and distractor stimuli as well as performance data were examined for group differences.
Results:
Anxious children displayed a significantly larger NoGo-related N1 global field power than did control children while no group differences were found for the N2 and P3 potentials. Groups did not differ in CPT performance.
Conclusions:
Anxious children showed early attentional enhancement (N1) to stimuli indicating need for inhibition but not increased resource allocation to actual response inhibition.
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