Age and anxiety symptoms jointly moderated the curvilinear changes in trial-level ERN following repeated errors on a Go/No-Go task during early adolescence

Abstract

The ability to detect and monitor errors enables us to maintain optimal performance across tasks. One neurophysiological index of error monitoring is the error-related negativity (ERN), a fronto-central negative deflection peaking between 0 and 150 ms following an erroneous response. While the developmental literature has illustrated age-related differences in the ERN and its association with anxiety, the literature has mainly focused on the between-person differences of the ERN. Our study examined the within-person variations of the ERN in 115 community-dwelling 9- to 12-year-olds (66 girls; mean age/SD = 11.00/1.16 years). Participants completed an EEG Go/No-Go task and reported their anxiety symptoms. Multilevel growth analyses yielded significant within-person, curvilinear changes in the ERN throughout the task. Youths' trial-level ERN increased (i.e., became more negative) with early errors, but decreased with subsequent errors. This curvilinear pattern was evident in older, but not younger, youths. Age also interacted with anxiety symptoms: younger youths with higher anxiety showed a continuous increase in the ERN throughout the task, whereas older youths with higher anxiety showed an initial increase followed by a decline in the ERN. Our study contributed novel evidence for the development of the ERN and the underlying mechanisms of the ERN-anxiety relationship that cannot be captured by between-person approaches.

Keywords: adolescent development; anxiety; error processing; error-related negativity; multilevel growth analyses.