Introduction
In many experiment paradigms, people’s response speed and accuracy is measured. In some paradigms people’s capacity not to respond is tested. One of these paradigms is known as Go/No-go paradigms (see also Go/No-go on wikipedia). Typically, in some conditions participants have to respond, while in other conditions they are asked not to respond.
| The Go/No-go task is great for measuring impulsiveness. |
| No-go conditions can be combined with many other paradigms, such as flanker and search tasks. For example, visual search paradigms, people only press a button when they find a target, and withhold when they do not find a target. |
| In another type of a Go/No-go paradigm, people are first asked to respond, but on some trials the go signal changes into a stop signal when you are just ready to respond. See the Stop Signal Task. |
About this implementation
In this version, you just see the text Go or No go. When you see Go, you need to respond within 2 seconds. When you see No-go, you need to make sure you do not press the button (for 2 seconds).
This task is made a bit more difficult because there are more Go than No-go trials. You will see that when Go trials repeat, you get faster. But then, when a No-Go trial comes, you might not be able to stop.
Run the demo
| In this example, you will |
Data output file
| In PsyToolkit, the data output file is simply a textfile. The save line of the PsyToolkit experiment script determines what is being saved in the data output file. Typically, for each experimental trial, you would have exactly one line in your text file, and each number/word on that line gives you the information you need for your data analysis, such as the condition, response speed, and whether an error was made. |
Meaning of the columns in the output datafile. You need this information for your data analysis.
| Colum | Meaning |
|---|---|
1 |
Name of task: go or nogo |
2 |
The response speed (in nogo trials, this is 2000, the timeout) |
3 |
The error status (0 is correct, 1 is error) |
Download
| If you have a PsyToolkit account, you can upload the zipfile directly to your PsyToolkit account. Watch a video on how to do that. If you want to upload the zipfile into your PsyToolkit account, make sure the file is not automatically uncompressed (some browsers, especially Mac Safari, by default uncompress zip files). Read here how to easily deal with this. |
Further reading
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Criaud, M. & Boulinguez, P. (2012). Have we been asking the right questions when assessing response inhibition in go/no-go tasks with fMRI? A meta-analysis and critical review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 37(1), 11-23.
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Verbruggen, F. & Logan, G.D. (2008). Automatic and controlled response inhibition: Associative learning in the go/no-go and stop-signal paradigms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(4), 649-672.