Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond
Created: December 21, 2017
Last Modified: November 17, 2025 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond
Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC
Go/Nogo Tasks are used as behavioral measures of inhibition and cognitive control. The Alcohol Go/No Tasks leverages this paradigm to investigate cognitive control to alcoholic stimuli. The implemented procedure is based on Amesa et al (2014).
Amesa, S.L., Wong, S.W., Bechara, A., Cappelli, C., Dust, M., Grenard, J.L., & Alan W. Stacy, A.W. (2014). Neural correlates of a Go/NoGo task with alcohol stimuli in light and heavy young drinkers. Behavioural Brain Research, 274, 382–389.
Gregg, A. & Sedikides, C. (2010). Narcissistic Fragility: Rethinking Its Links to Explicit and Implicit Self-esteem, Self and Identity, 9:2, 142-161 (p.148)
15 minutes
This is a basic go-nogo task. Participants are asked to press the spacebar for a go-stimulus (here: non-alcoholic beverages) and withhold the response for nogo stimuli (here: alcoholic beverages).
1. Practice Block: (default settings - see section Editable Parameters for possible changes)
- max. 8 practice blocks
- each practice blocks runs 10 trials
- if proportion correct of the current practice block is >= 0.9 (editable default setting), practice ends and the test phase commences
- proportion correct after the 8th practice block is still < 0.9 (editable default setting), the task prematurely aborts
- errorfeedback (red X) during practice trials
2. Test Block: (default settings - see section Editable Parameters for possible changes)
- 200 trials total => 160 go trials: 40 nogo trials
- order of go and nogo trials is randomly determined
- no errorfeedback
Trial Timings:
fixation cross (variable duration)* ->
stim presentation for max. 1500ms (if no response is given trial terminates after 1500ms after onset of stim;
if response is provided before 1500ms a fixation cross replaces the stim for the remainder of the 1500ms stim duration)->
next trial: fixation cross -> ...
•fixation cross timings: see list.fixationDurations under section Editable Lists
By default, the script selects randomly with replacement from durations 1000-3000 (steps of 100ms)
provided by Millisecond - can be edited under section Editable Stimuli
the stimuli presented are based on the stimuli used by Amesa et al (2014).
Additional stimuli can be added to item.goStims and item.nogoStims
provided by Millisecond - can be edited under section Editable Instructions.
The instructions provided are not original to Amesa et al (2014).
if additional stimuli are added to the design, 'gonogo_intro.htm' might have to be edited to
display the added stimuli.
See script 'alcoholgonogo_instructions_inc.iqjs'
File Name: alcoholgonogo_summary*.iqdat
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| inquisit.version | Inquisit version number |
| computer.platform | Device platform: win | mac |ios | android |
| computer.touch | 0 = device has no touchscreen capabilities; 1 = device has touchscreen capabilities |
| computer.hasKeyboard | 0 = no external keyboard detected; 1 = external keyboard detected |
| startDate | Date the session was run |
| startTime | Time the session was run |
| subjectId | Participant ID |
| groupId | Group number |
| sessionId | Session number |
| elapsedTime | Session duration in ms |
| completed | 0 = Test was not completed 1 = Test was completed |
| practiceBlocks | Number of practice blocks run |
| failPractice | 1 (true)= participant failed practice (mean proportion correct during the last practice block < minPracticeAcc) and test was skipped. 0 (false)= participant passed practice |
| numberGoTrials | Number of Go trials run in the test block ("non-alcoholic beverages") |
| numberNoGoTrials | Number of Nogo trials run in the test block |
| hitRate | Calculates the Hit rate (hit = proportion of correctly hitting the spacebar for go-trials) |
| missRate | The Miss rate (1-hitRate) |
| faRate* | Calculates the False Alarm (commission) rate (FA = proportion of incorrectly hitting the spacebar for nogo-trials) => the higher the commission rate, the lower cognitive control in the face of alcoholic stimuli |
| correctRejectRate | The Correct Rejection rate (1-faRate) |
| zHitRate | Calculates the z-score for the hitRate. Adjustments are made if the hitRate = 0 (increased to 0.005) or 1 (decreased to 0.995)* |
| zFARate | Calculates the z-score for the false alarm rate. Adjustments are made if the faRate = 0 (increased to 0.005) or 1 (decreased to 0.995)* adjustments to hit and false alarm rates for Signal Detection Measures based on Gregg & Sedikides (2010) |
| dPrime | Computes d' (parametric measure of discriminability btw. signals and noise) => Range (in this script) -5.1516586840152740479 <= dprime <= 5.1516586840152740479 (=perfect performance) => The higher the value, the better signals (non-alcoholic stimuli) were overall distinguished from noise (alcoholic stimuli) and thus the less distraction alcoholic stimuli presented (d' = 0: chance performance; negative d-primes: participant treated nontargets as targets and targets as nontargets) |
| c | C-criterion in signal detection:The absolute value of c provides an indication of the strength of the response bias/response style negative: participant more likely to report that signal (non-alcoholic stimuli) is present (liberal response style) may favor faster responding in speed-accuracy trade-off response paradigms positive: favoring caution (conservative response style) |
| meanRTHits | Mean response times (ms) of hits during test trials |
| sdRTHits | Standard deviation of hit latencies during test trials |
| medianRTHits | Median response times (ms) of hits during test trials |
| minRTHit | Minimum response time (ms) of hits during test trials (= fastest hit response) |
| maxRTHit | Maximum response time (ms) of hits during test trials (= slowest hit response) |
File Name: alcoholgonogo_raw*.iqdat
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| build | Inquisit version number |
| computer.platform | Device platform: win | mac |ios | android |
| computer.touch | 0 = device has no touchscreen capabilities; 1 = device has touchscreen capabilities |
| computer.hasKeyboard | 0 = no external keyboard detected; 1 = external keyboard detected |
| date | Date the session was run |
| time | Time the session was run |
| subject | Participant ID |
| group | Group number |
| session | Session number |
| blockcode | The name the current block (built-in Inquisit variable) |
| blocknum | The number of the current block (built-in Inquisit variable) |
| trialcode | The name of the currently recorded trial (built-in Inquisit variable) |
| trialnum | The number of the currently recorded trial (built-in Inquisit variable) trialnum is a built-in Inquisit variable; it counts all trials run even those that do not store data to the data file. |
| phase | "practice" vs "test" |
| practiceBlocks | Running count of the number of practice blocks run |
| fixationDuration | Stores the sampled fixation duration (in ms) for the current trial |
| stim | Stores the item presented as go/nogo stimulus |
| response | The participant's response (scancode of response button) 57 = space bar 0 = no response |
| correct | Accuracy of response: 1 = correct response; 0 = otherwise |
| latency | The response latency (in ms); measured from: onset of stimulus until response or trial time out |
| list.acc.mean | Proportion correct responses in the current block |
The procedure can be adjusted by setting the following parameters.
| Name | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| fixationSize | Proportional height of fixation cross (proportional to canvas height) | 8% |
| picSize | Proportional height of images (proportional to canvas height) | 50% |
| numberOfTestTrials | The number of test trials that should be run if this number is changed, the new number should work with parameters 'goFrequency/nogoFrequency' | 200 |
| goFrequency | Proportion of go trials to be run | 0.8 |
| noGoFrequency | Proportion of nogo trials to be run these proportions should result in integer numbers of trials given the numberOfTesttrials | 0.2 |
| readyDuration | The duration (in ms) of the 'get ready trial' | 2000ms |
| stimDuration | The duration (in ms) of the image presentations participants have the entire stimDuration to respond | 1500ms |
| maxPracticeBlocks | The maximum number of practice blocks to be run | 8 |
| trialsPerPracticeBlock | The number of trials per practice blocks the number should be an even number, as the ratio of go:nogo trials = 1:1 during practice | |
| minPracticeAcc | The cut-off proportion correct during practice to stop the practice phase Notes - with 10 trials per block (default), participant can only make 1 error to pass the current practice block - to remove the performance constraint, set minPracticeAcc = 0. In this case, participants run one practice block and move on to the test regardless of practice performance. | 0.9 |