Response Inhibition
Go/No-Go Game
Also called: child go/no-go task, preschool go/no-go, go/no-go for children, picture go/no-go game
Measure how often young children hold back a tap: they tap an orange circle and wait when a blue star appears, scored as the share of stars left alone.
4-6 minTimed: desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad
Free to start: 10 free participants per account, then $0.99 per participant for academic research, or any yearly plan. Try it here first, with no account.
- Papers, 2021 to 2025
- 3,039
- Evidence grade
- A
- Registered clinical studies
- 702
Figures for the Go/No-Go Task, the published test this game is compared with.
How these are countedWhat it measures
A picture game for children aged 3 to 6, with an adult reading the screens aloud. The child taps an orange circle and waits when a blue star appears. Scores report how often the child held back for the star, how often the child tapped the circle and how fast. They are raw research measures with no percentile.
Constructs
- Response inhibition
- Inhibitory control in early childhood
- Prepotent response
Research uses
- Research on inhibitory control in early childhood
How the paradigm works
The Go/No-Go Game is a picture-game version of the go/no-go task for children aged 3 to 6. An orange circle (go) or a blue star (no-go) appears at one of four places on a tablet or touch screen, and the child taps the circle with a finger and waits when the star appears. Most pictures are circles (80%), so tapping becomes the habit, and holding back for the star is the part that asks for inhibitory control. The design follows Howard and Okely (2015) and Howard and Melhuish (2017), whose tablet go/no-go task for preschoolers showed that tapping the picture itself, with moving pictures, gave better data than a button press. The pictures, words and animation here are our own.
More about the paradigm
An adult reads each screen aloud and presses its button. The child sees a demonstration and then practices with a smile or a shake after each try: 5 go trials, 5 no-go trials and 10 mixed trials, and the mixed practice runs once more when fewer than 7 of the 10 are right. The test has 75 trials in three blocks of 25, with a rest between blocks and no feedback. Each picture stays on the screen for 1,500 ms and the next comes 1,000 ms after it goes. Fifteen of the 75 pictures are stars, five in each block, and a block never starts with a star or has more than two in a row. The game has two looks: a game look with one face on each picture, and a plain look with the shapes alone. Both looks draw each picture at the same size, color, place and timing, and the researcher chooses the look when adding the game to a study.
Scores
- No-Go Accuracy%
- Share of blue star trials where the child did not tap. Left out: trials the screen was left during, trials whose only tap came under 300 ms after the picture appeared, and trials with no tap counted while a second finger or a hand touched the screen.
- Higher means the child held back more often; compared within a study
- Go Accuracy%
- Share of orange circle trials where the child tapped the circle within 1,500 ms.
- Higher means the child tapped more often; context for the main score
- Impulse Control Score%
- Go accuracy times no-go accuracy, the impulse control score of Howard and Melhuish (2017).
- Higher means more taps on circles and more holding back for stars
- Median Go Timems
- Median time from the circle's appearance to the child's tap, over the circle trials tapped inside the window.
- Informational
- Usable Trialstrials
- Test trials counted in the scores. Left out: trials the screen was left during, trials whose only tap came under 300 ms, and trials with no tap counted while a second finger or a hand touched the screen.
- Quality check
Use and evidence
3,039 papers from 2021 to 2025 name this task in their title or abstract, up 7% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 7 of 582 test families in our census. These counts belong to the Go/No-Go Task, the published test this game is compared with. This game is a new measure, so its own reliability and norms come from use. See the counts for every test.
Show the numbers
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 771 |
| 2024 | 584 |
| 2023 | 585 |
| 2022 | 496 |
| 2021 | 603 |
| 2020 | 574 |
| 2019 | 590 |
| 2018 | 523 |
| 2017 | 599 |
| 2016 | 548 |
| 2015 | 553 |
| 2014 | 487 |
| 2013 | 457 |
| 2012 | 383 |
| 2011 | 375 |
| 2010 | 367 |
| 2009 | 296 |
| 2008 | 243 |
| 2007 | 223 |
| 2006 | 196 |
| 2005 | 161 |
| 2004 | 178 |
| 2003 | 125 |
| 2002 | 106 |
| 2001 | 81 |
| 2000 | 96 |
Use grade A
1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025.
Evidence grade A
At least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome.
- Papers on test-retest reliability
- 84
- Papers on reliability or validity
- 683
- Registered clinical studies using it as an outcome
- 702
Measured on ConductCognition
Pooled across the studies that feed our platform norms, by device group. A figure needs 50 or more people.
No pooled figure yet.
How the grades work
Use: A is 1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025, B 300 to 999, C 100 to 299, D 30 to 99 and E fewer than 30. Evidence: A means at least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome; B, at least 8 test-retest papers, and either 5 registered clinical studies or 150 reliability or validity papers; C, at least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies; D, little published measurement evidence found. The counts measure use. They include every paper that names the task in its title or abstract. Grades describe the published research on the Go/No-Go Task, the published test this game is compared with, not the game's own.
Source: ConductCognition test census 0.39.0, counted 31 October 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Task design
The trial sequence as the test runs in ConductCognition.
- Pictures
- An orange circle (go) or a blue star (no-go), both with the same dark edge. The game look adds one small face to each picture and a pale frame around the screen; the plain look shows the shapes alone. Both looks draw each picture at the same size, color, place and timing. A picture is 60% of the shorter side of its quarter of the screen and never under 44 px.
- Places
- Four places in a two by two grid, each a little off its center in a fixed pattern. Each kind of picture appears at each place equally often, to within one, over the session.
- Trial
- The picture stays 1,500 ms, then the screen is empty for 1,000 ms. The child taps the picture itself. A tap sooner than 300 ms after it appears is not an answer, and a trial whose only tap was that early is left out.
- Test
- 75 trials in 3 blocks of 25, with a rest between blocks: 60 circles and 15 stars, 5 stars in each block. A block never begins with a star and never has more than 2 in a row. The order comes from the session's seed, and there is no feedback.
- Practice
- An adult reads each screen aloud and presses its button. A demonstration of each picture, then 5 circles, 5 stars and 10 mixed trials (8 circles and 2 stars), each answered with a smile or a shake. The mixed practice runs once more when fewer than 7 of its 10 are right.
- Scores
- No-go accuracy (the share of stars left alone, the main score), go accuracy, impulse control (go accuracy times no-go accuracy), the median time to tap a circle and the number of usable trials. A trial the screen was left during is left out, and so is a trial with no tap counted while a second finger or a hand touched the screen.
The design follows the go/no-go research with preschoolers of Howard and Okely (2015) and Howard and Melhuish (2017); the pictures, words and animation are our own. This is a new measure for children aged 3 to 6: its reliability and norms come from use, the figures published in those studies are not its own, and it computes no percentiles.
Quality checks
Each session is marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason, before you see its scores.
Scored rows: go_nogo_game test trials with a countable answer (a trial the tab left, one whose only tap came under 300 ms, and one with no tap while a second finger or a hand touched the screen are left out): tap the orange circle (go, 80%) and leave the blue star alone (no-go, 20%) within 1.5 s. Responding mainly to the star invalidates; not telling the circle from the star is flagged. Tapping fewer than half the circles, or having fewer than 60 of 75 scored trials, invalidates. An unbroken run of missed circles covering half of them withholds the percentile.
Why these rules
Accuracy against chance does not apply because leaving the star alone is correct on one trial in five. Responses concentrated on trials that needed none (one-sided Fisher exact test, p < .05) mean the instructions were reversed and invalidate; responses that do not separate the two trial types are flagged. A missed circle is part of what the game measures in young children, so the platform's missed-response limit does not apply. A tap under 300 ms is never counted as an answer (Howard and Melhuish 2017 removed such trials), so the 100 ms rule has nothing to check. A trial in which a second finger or a hand touched the screen and no tap counted is left out, because that contact may have swallowed the child's tap and a star would read as left alone. A child who tapped fewer than half the circles did not play the game, and fewer than 60 scored trials of 75 is too few to score; both limits are ConductScience choices, not published cut-offs. An unbroken run of missed circles covering half of them may mean the child stopped, so it is flagged and the percentile withheld.
No percentile. Scores and quality flags only.
Running this test
Settings you can change
| Setting | Standard | Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Look | Game | Game, Plain |
Every plan can change the look, which never changes how a result is scored.
Need a setting this test does not have?
Devices and languages
- Timed test: participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. Participant devices
- Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese.
- Available on: Every plan, including the free plan.
- No percentile. Scores and quality flags only. How norms work
- Recruiting online? See the setup guides for Prolific, Sona Systems, CloudResearch Connect and Qualtrics.
Cite and describe
Participants completed the Go/No-Go Game in a web browser (ConductCognition task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0; Howard and Okely, 2015), with the standard settings (look: Game). The main score was no-go accuracy (share of blue star trials where the child did not tap).
ConductCognition versions: task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0. Every export records the versions each session used, for a methods section.
- Howard, S. J., & Melhuish, E. (2017). An early years toolbox for assessing early executive function, language, self-regulation, and social development: Validity, reliability, and preliminary norms. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 35(3), 255-275. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734282916633009The design of a go/no-go task for young children: 80% go trials, 75 test trials in three blocks, 1,500 ms pictures with a 1,000 ms gap, practice with go, no-go and mixed trials, the impulse control score and the removal of responses under 300 ms.
- Howard, S. J., & Okely, A. D. (2015). Catching fish and avoiding sharks: Investigating factors that influence developmentally appropriate measurement of preschoolers' inhibitory control. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 33(6), 585-596. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734282914562933The comparison of response methods (tapping the picture or pressing a button), still and moving pictures and presentation times in preschoolers.
Source papers
Questions
How long does the Go/No-Go Game take?
About 4 to 6 minutes, as listed in the test library.
What device does a participant need?
Timed test: participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. The browser must be Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
What scores does it produce?
No-Go Accuracy, Go Accuracy, Impulse Control Score, Median Go Time and Usable Trials. Each session is also marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason.
How widely is the Go/No-Go Task used in research?
These counts belong to the Go/No-Go Task, the published test this game is compared with. This game is a new measure, so its own reliability and norms come from use. 3,039 papers from 2021 to 2025 name the task in their title or abstract, up 7% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 7 of 582 test families in the ConductCognition test census (use grade A). Source: ConductCognition test census 0.39.0, counted 31 October 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
How much reliability evidence does the Go/No-Go Task have?
These counts belong to the Go/No-Go Task, the published test this game is compared with. This game is a new measure, so its own reliability and norms come from use. In the published research, 84 papers report the task's test-retest reliability and 702 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome (evidence grade A in the ConductCognition test census).
Does it report a percentile?
No. Scores and quality flags only.
Which settings can a researcher change?
Look (Game, Plain). Every plan can change the look, which never changes how a result is scored.
Which languages can participants use?
Participants can take this test in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. English is on every plan, and the other languages come with yearly plans. Have a native speaker read the machine-translated text before launch.
Is this a clinical test?
No. ConductCognition is for research use only. It runs, scores and exports the test; clinical interpretation is outside the platform.
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