Affective Go/No Go Task

Background

Go/Nogo Tasks are used as cognitive-behavioral measures of cognitive control, specifically the ability to withhold a prepotent behavioral response. The 'Go' part of a Go/Nogo experimental design refers to trials that run stimuli that require a response, the 'Nogo' trials on the other hand present stimuli that require participants to withhold this response. By increasing the ratio of 'Go' to 'Nogo' trials, the go-response becomes the prepotent and automatic response pattern. The simplicity of the Go/Nogo testing paradigm makes it suitable to be used with participants of a wide range of ages. Furthermore, it has been shown that younger participants are more susceptible to making commission errors supporting that cognitive control increases with age.

When using emotional charged stimuli such as face stimuli used by Nim Tottenham and colleagues in their 2011 Emotional Go/Nogo Task procedure, the procedure can be used to assess how well people maintain cognitive control in the context of potentially interfering emotional information. Jie-Yu Chuang and colleagues used a similar go/nogo set up with affective words in their 2017 study on sex-differences in clinically depressed adolescents. Due to the similarity of the Emotional Go/Nogo Task (using faces) and the Affective Go/Nogo task (using words), the latter is also referred to as the "Verbal Emotional Go/No Task".

Task Procedure

The Millisecond implementation of the Affective Go/Nogo procedure provides the option for a short practice session to familiarize participants with the Go/Nogo procedure. During this optional practice, participants are asked to press the spacebar for "Living Things" (e.g "lion") but not for "Non-Living Things" (e.g. "sofa"). Go and Nogo trials are balanced throughout the practice session and each stimulus category is presented 5 times for a total of 10 trials. Error Feedback is provided during practice.

The test phase consists of three rounds of testing. Each round runs 6 blocks of 20 trials each (10 go trials, 10 nogo trials). Each affective word category (positive, negative, neutral) is used once as the go-stimuli and once as the nogo stimuli. For example, in block 'HN', participants are asked to press the spacebar anytime they see a positive ('happy') word such as "LAUGHTER" but do nothing for any other words (which are all neutral ones such as "HYDRANT"). In block 'NH' on the other hand, participants are are asked to press the spacebar anytime they see a NEUTRAL word but do nothing for any other words (which are all positive ones). The ratio of Go:Nogo Trials in each of the eight blocks is 1:1.

During each trial the image is displayed for 450ms, followed by a blank screen for 750ms. Response timeout is after 1200ms.

What it Measures

The Affective Go/Nogo task measures cognitive control in the context of emotionally charged words

Psychological domains

• Executive Control: Ability to resolve conflict amongst competing stimuli, involving response inhibition and decision-making
• Inhibitory Control / Response Inhibition: Ability to override automatic/dominant responses that interfere with one's goals
• Selective Attention: Focusing on a specific stimulus or task while filtering out distractions
• Emotion Regulation: Ability to monitor, evaluate, and modify one's emotional reactions

Main Performance Metrics

• Commission Errors (False Alarms): Responding when you should have withheld. This is the primary measure of inhibitory control.
• Omission Errors: Failing to respond to a 'Go' stimulus, which measures attention.
• Reaction Time (RT): The speed of responses on 'Go' trials, often used to identify emotional bias
• d-prime: Main measure of emotion discrimination between Go and Nogo stimuli

Psychiatric Conditions

Affective Go/Nogo paradigms have been successfully used to study the following patient groups (amongst others):

• Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)
• Bipolar Disorder/Mania
• Suicidal Ideation
• Eating Disorders

References

Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Affective Go/No Go Task.

---

Loeber, S., & Duka, T. (2009). Acute alcohol decreases performance of an instrumental response to avoid aversive consequences in social drinkers. Psychopharmacology, 205(4), 577-587.

Brand, Goldberg, Gunawardane, Gopin, Powers, Malhotra, & Burdick. (2012). Emotional bias in unaffected siblings of patients with bipolar I disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders, 136(3), 1053-1058.

García-Blanco, A., Perea, M., & Livianos, L. (2013). Mood-congruent bias and attention shifts in the different episodes of bipolar disorder. Cognition & Emotion, 27(6), 1114-1121.

Chuang, Jie-Yu et al (2017). Adolescent Major Depressive Disorder: Neuroimaging Evidence of Sex Difference during an Affective Go/No-Go Task. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 8, 1-12.

Lyoo, Younghyun C., Park, Shinwon, Ju, Sejin, Shin, Kyung‐Shik, Hwang, Jaeuk, Yoon, Sujung, . . . Kim, Jieun E. (2018). A performance comparison between the two language versions of the Affective Go/No‐Go test: A randomised crossover study. International Journal of Psychology, 53(S1), 81-88.