The development of preparation, conflict monitoring and inhibition from early childhood to young adulthood; a Go/Nogo ERP study

Abstract

The present developmental study aimed to trace changes in response expectation, preparation, conflict monitoring and subsequent response inhibition from 6 years of age to adulthood. In two groups of children (6–7 and 9–10 years old) and young adults (19–23 years old), behavior and event-related brain activity (ERP) in a CPT-AX task was measured. Hits, false alarms, inattention and impulsivity scores and ERP measures of conflict monitoring and inhibition (Nogo-N2 and P3), cue-orientation and prestimulus target expectation (cue-P2 and P3) and response preparation (Contingent Negative Variation; CNV) were collected. Behavioral measures indicated that attention processes developed most strongly before age 10, whereas impulsive behavior only started to diminish after the age of 10. Nogo-N2 effects were largest and more widely distributed across fronto-parietal electrodes in 6–7-year olds and decreased linearly with age. Nogo-P3 effects showed an opposite pattern by being absent in the youngest children, starting to develop at age 9–10 and reaching maturity in young adulthood. These developmental behavioral and ERP results are supportive of links between Nogo-N2 and conflict monitoring and Nogo-P3 and response inhibition and suggest that both are liable to different developmental progress. Furthermore, enhanced cue-P3 activity in both 6–7 and 9–10-year olds was argued to reflect a higher level of Go-stimulus expectation, that might cause them to experience more conflict on subsequent Nogo-trials, when the ‘not-expected’ stimulus appears. On the other hand, young children's reduced preparatory CNV activity was interpreted as a sign of reduced response priming caused by yet immature fronto-parietal networks involved in motor regulation.