P300 response among children and adolescents: Age and stimulus effects

The association between age and P300 components and also the influence of stimulus-related variations, particularly intensity and probability in children and adolescents is of interest. P300 amplitude and latency and the effects of stimulus variation on P300 components were measured in 60 subjects in the age-group of 5-18 years and analysed with one-way ANOVA. P < 0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Mean P300 latency decreased and mean N2-P3 amplitudes increased with statistical significance (p<0.001) (one-way ANOVA) with substantially greater changes till 8-11 years of age. P300 latency varied inversely with stimulus intensity and probability while N2-P3 amplitude varied positively with stimulus intensity and adversely with change in the probability in all the age-groups (p<0.001) (one-way ANOVA). Age affects both P300 latency and amplitude in the children and adolescents in a characteristic pattern and stimulus variations affect the P300 responses relatively uniformly in different younger age-groups.