The contingent negative variation in a Go/No Go avoidance task: relationships with personality and subjective state

Howard et al. (1982) reported an association in mentally abnormal offenders between psychometric impulsiveness and the degree of differentiation in the contingent negative variation (CNV) recorded at the vertex between Go and No Go conditions in a Go/No Go signalled avoidance task. The present study aimed to investigate whether this finding extended to two samples of young, healthy volunteers using a variety of impulsiveness-related measures. As well as examining the Go/No Go CNV recorded from the vertex, the present study investigated the Go/No Go CNV recorded bilaterally at central (C3 and C4: Experiment 1) and temporal (T3 and T4: Experiment 2) electrode derivations. The study also investigated relationships between the Go/No Go CNV and subjective state. including stress and arousal as measured by a mood-adjective checklist, as well as several task-related state measures. The Go CNV recorded at the vertex was found to relate to a variety of impulsiveness-related measures, in particular to Eysenck's Impulsivity, Venturesomeness and Psychoticism. The Go/No Go CNV recorded at temporal sites was more closely related to measures of Emotionality. While the Go CNV appears to be an electrocortical index of a neuropsychological system mediating subjective stress, the No Go CNV appears to index subjective arousal. Results are interpreted in terms of orthogonal 'primary' and 'secondary' appraisal processes (Folkman et al., 1979), and their implications for Gray's (1982) neuropsychological theory of anxiety and Tucker and Williamson's (1984) neural control systems model of human self-regulation are outlined.