Age-related changes in cognitive ERPs of attenuation

This investigation explored developmental changes in passive and effortful components of ERPs associated with a visual attention task in children, adolescents, and adults. The task was a 'go-go' version of a continuous performance task, coupled with a passive attending phase in which the subjects merely watched the stimuli of the task. The three age groups featured a constellation of ERP components that shared the same general morphological appearance and distribution, but differences were seen with respect to latencies and amplitudes. Consistent with other studies, there was an inverse relationship with respect to age and peak latencies of the major passive and effortful components. With respect to peak amplitudes, however, the most impressive changes with age were observed in the passive processing components. For example, the P150 and P250 components presented greater amplitudes in children, whereas the N200 component presented its greatest amplitude in adults. While passive in the sense that their appearances were independent of the 'decision-making' process, these components were found to be upwardly adjustable by effort. The late positive component was found to be a combination of a passive P350 and an effortful P450. The P350 component was judged to be largely passive in character as it was well developed in subjects of all age groups when passively attending to the visual stimuli. There was no marked amplitude difference between the child and adult P450 components, but the components peaked in amplitude later in the children. Finally, the children's ERPs featured a distinct frontal negativity (FN) that was present in the Passive phase, but greatly enhanced during the Effortful phase. This study, as have many others, showed that there are reliable developmental changes in the components of visual ERPs. Therefore, the characteristics of the various components of cognitive ERPs may be effective markers of neurodevelopmental status, especially of those neuronal systems vital to attentional processing and effort regulation.