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Updated: Aug 14, 2026
Online Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Protocol for Measuring Cortical Physiology Associated with Response Inhibition
Published on: February 8, 2018
Conditions under which children experience inhibitory difficulty with a "button-press" go/no-go task
Andrew Simpson1, Kevin J Riggs
1Department of Psychology, London Metropolitan University, London E1 7NT, UK. a.simpson@londonmet.ac.uk
Insights
Inhibitory control in children is often measured using go/no-go tasks. This study found stimulus presentation speed, not task design, is crucial for accurately assessing inhibitory difficulties in young children.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Background:
- Go/no-go tasks are commonly used to assess inhibitory control development in children.
- However, the specific "button-press" variant may not accurately measure inhibition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the conditions influencing inhibitory difficulty in young children using a button-press go/no-go task.
- To determine the validity of the button-press task as a measure of inhibitory control.
Main Methods:
- Examined inhibitory performance in 120 children (mean age 3 years 6 months).
- Manipulated stimulus presentation speed in a button-press go/no-go task.
Main Results:
- Stimulus presentation speed significantly impacts observed inhibitory difficulty.
- Faster presentation speeds appear to elicit more "failures" to inhibit, potentially due to task demands rather than inhibition deficits.
- Previous studies may have used insufficiently brief stimulus durations.
Conclusions:
- The inhibitory credentials of button-press go/no-go tasks require careful validation.
- Stimulus presentation speed is a critical factor to consider when interpreting results from these tasks.
- Researchers must establish task validity before using it as a marker of inhibitory control in children.
Abstract:
Go/no-go tasks seem to provide a simple marker of inhibitory development in young children. Children are told to respond to one stimulus on go trials but to make no response to another stimulus on no-go trials; responding on no-go trials is assumed to reflect a failure to inhibit the go response. However, there is evidence to suggest that a type of go/no-go task, which we call the "button-press" task, does not require inhibition. We investigated the conditions under which young children (M=3 years 6 months, N=120) experience inhibitory difficulty with this type of task. The data suggest that the speed of stimulus presentation is crucial and that other studies using this type of task have presented the stimuli too briefly. The importance of establishing the inhibitory credentials of a task before it is used as a marker of inhibitory control is emphasized.
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