A challenge for both behavioral and psychophysiological investigations with developmental populations is identifying tasks that are engaging (e.g., maintain visual attention) and require responses that are within the participants’ behavioral repertoire (e.g., looking, reaching). Most of the cognitive tasks used in adult EEG research are inappropriate for younger populations because they require receptive and productive language skills (i.e., instructions, stimuli, responses), include numerous trials that lengthen the experimental protocol, and use methods that are not engaging for infants and children. When designing age-appropriate EEG tasks, researchers must also consider the influence of gross motor movements, eye blinks or lateral eye movement, and unrelated changes in behavioral state (e.g., crying or drowsiness during a cognitive task), which contaminate the EEG recording (i.e., artifacts; see next section). In order for EEG collection to be worthwhile, researchers must have sufficient artifact-free EEG available for data analysis. Since only portions of the EEG that are associated with the cognitive process of interest are included in data analysis, researchers should identify tasks that require minimal gross motor movement. Likewise, state changes can be reduced by assessing participants at optimal points in their sleep-wake and eating cycles.
