The Test-Retest Reliability of the Visually Evoked Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) in Children and Adults.

Establishing the reliability of event-related potentials is critical for future applications to biomarker development and clinical research. Few studies have examined the reliability of the contingent negative variation (CNV), and only in adults. The current study explored test-retest reliability of the visually evoked CNV and its embedded components, the O-wave and the E-wave, in children (7-13 years) and young adults (19-28 years) during a visual Go/No-Go task over 1-2 weeks. Test-retest reliability of the components was moderate for children, and low-to-moderate for adults. These findings were in contrast to previous work with adults showing moderate-to-high reliability of the auditory-evoked CNV.