👉 Data and code associated with a meta-analysis project seeking to determine if flanker task parameters are related to the strength of association between the ERN and anxiety
👉 The error-related negativity (ERN)—an index of error monitoring—is associated with anxiety symptomatology. Although recent work suggests associations between the ERN and anxiety are relatively modest, little attention has been paid to how variation in task parameters may influence the strength of ERN-anxiety associations. To close this gap, the current meta-analysis assesses the possible influence of task parameter variation in the Flanker task—the most commonly used task to elicit the ERN—on observed ERN-anxiety associations. Here, we leveraged an existing open database of published/unpublished ERN-anxiety effect sizes, supplementing this database by further coding for variation in stimulus type (letter vs. arrow), response type (one-handed vs. two-handed), and block-level feedback (with vs. without). We then performed meta-regression analyses to assess whether variation in these Flanker task parameters moderated the effect size of ERN-anxiety associations. No evidence for an effect of stimulus type was identified, however, both response type and block-level feedback significantly moderated the magnitude of ERN-anxiety associations. Specifically, studies employing either a two-handed (vs. one-handed) task, or those with (vs. without) block-level feedback exhibited a more than two-fold increase in the estimated ERN-anxiety effect size. Thus, accounting for common variation in task parameters may at least partially explain apparent inconsistencies in the literature regarding the magnitude of ERN-anxiety associations. At a practical level, these data can inform the design of studies seeking to maximize ERN-anxiety associations. At a theoretical level, the results also inform testable hypotheses regarding the exact nature of the association between the ERN and anxiety.
👉 The data and code associated with the meta-analysis can be found in this repository. Code is located in the /code directory, data used for the meta-analysis is located in the /derivatives directory, and relevant plots are located in the /results directory. Note that the effect sizes used for this meta-analysis were drawn from the OSF website (https://osf.io/r7dvc/) associated with the Saunders & Inzlicht (2020) paper; extraction/coding of Flanker task parameters from the original papers were added by our team to allow for the current meta-analyses to be conducted. See the /derivatives directory and our manuscript for further details.
This main branch contains completed releases for this project. For all work-in-progress, please switch over to the dev branches.
George A. Buzzell1,2, Yanbin Niu3, Emily Machado1,2, Renata Dickinson1,2, Jason Moser4, Santiago Morales5, Sonya Troller-Renfree6
1Department of Psychology, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St, Miami, FL 7 33199, USA 2Center for Children and Families, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th St, Miami, 9 FL 33199, USA 3Department of Psychology and Human Development, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, 230 Appleton Pl #5721, Nashville, TN 37203, USA 4Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, 316 Physics Rd #262, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA 5Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, 3620 McClintock Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90089 6Department of Human Development, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 W. 120th St., New York, NY, 10027, USA
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