Caffeine affects children's ERPs and performance in an equiprobable go/no‐go task: Testing a processing schema.

Caffeine's stimulant properties were used to test a proposed processing schema for children's processing stages in the equiprobable auditory go/no‐go task. Active control‐related ERP components were hypothesized to be differentially enhanced by caffeine. Caffeine (80 mg) was administered in a counterbalanced, randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled, cross‐over study of 24 children, aged 8–12 years. Four blocks of an equiprobable auditory go/no‐go task were completed on each of two occasions, while on or off caffeine. ERP data sets from each condition (caffeine/go, placebo/go, caffeine/no‐go, placebo/no‐go) were subjected to separate temporal PCAs with extraction and varimax rotation of all components. Caffeine significantly reduced reaction time and go omission errors, and enhanced go PN, N2c, and P3b, and no‐go N1‐1 and N2b. This selective enhancement of different go/no‐go components by caffeine matched the predicted amplification of biomarkers of children's active control processing in this task. Some unexpected findings also support further refinements in the child processing schema. We explored a recently proposed child processing schema for the equiprobable go/no‐go task that associates ERP components with the stages of perceptual and cognitive processing in the task. Rather than linking components to the behavioral outcomes, here we used the arousal‐as‐amplifier effects of a common stimulant, caffeine, in a double‐blind placebo‐controlled cross‐over design in children. Selective enhancement of different go/no‐go components derived by an optimized principal components analysis approach matched the predicted biomarkers of active control processing, confirming the major elements of the schema. Additional caffeine effects support further clarifications and extensions of the processing schema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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