Age-related differences in the error-related negativity and error positivity in children and adolescents are moderated by sample and methodological characteristics: A meta-analysis

Abstract

The error-related negativity (ERN) and the error positivity (Pe) are electrophysiological components associated with error processing that are thought to exhibit distinctive developmental trajectories from childhood to adulthood. To investigate the age and age moderation effects on the ERN and the Pe strength during development, we conducted a preregistered three-level meta-analysis synthesizing 120 and 41 effect sizes across 18 group comparison studies and 19 correlational studies, respectively. The meta-analysis included studies with mean age range between 3.6 to 28.7 years for age-group comparisons and 6.1 to 18.7 years for age correlations. Results showed that age was associated with a more negative ERN (SMD = -.433, r = -.230). No statistically significant association between age and the Pe was found (SMD = .059, r = -.091), except for in a group comparison between younger and older adolescents. The age effects were not significantly moderated by whether a Flanker or a Go/No-Go task was used, whereas studies that used other tasks found larger age effects on the Pe. There was a moderating effect of electrode site, whereby the Fz and Cz electrode sites yielded stronger negative associations between age and the ERN and the Pe, respectively. The results confirm that the ERN and the Pe show differential development courses and suggest that sample and methodological characteristics influence the age effects, and lay the foundation for investigations of developmental patterns of error processing in relation to psychopathology and early genetic and environmental risk factors.

Event‐related potentials data quality in young children: Standardized measurement error of ERN and Pe

“…In line with this idea, in developmental investigations the amplitude of the Pe has been linked to academic achievement and motivational processes in young children (Kim et al, 2016(Kim et al, , 2017. A recent meta-analysis found no age effects on Pe, except for when the ERPs of younger relative to older adolescents were compared, and no moderation of the age effects by sex (Boen et al, 2021).…”

The psychometric upgrade psychophysiology needs

“…Any single operationalization of ERN makes assumptions about the neural activity of interest, and those assumptions ultimately impact interpretations. Metaanalytic work supports the possibility that variations in how ERN is recorded, analyzed, and scored alter interpretations by showing that ERN findings can be moderated by task (Lutz et al, 2021;Martin et al, 2018;Mathews et al, 2012;Pasion & Barbosa, 2019;Riesel, 2019), dataprocessing pipeline (Clayson, 2020), and scoring procedures (Boen et al, 2022;Pasion & Barbosa, 2019). Further evidence comes from a multiverse analysis of different data-processing pipelines and scoring procedures (3456 total ERN scores per person) that indicated that different methodological decisions changed the final ERN average amplitudes and variability of scores (Clayson, Baldwin, Rocha, et al, 2021).…”