An explorative multiverse study for extracting differences in P3 latencies between young and old adults

Abstract

AbstractIt is well established that P3 latencies increase with age. Investigating these age‐related differences requires numerous methodological decisions, resulting in pipelines of great variation. The aim of the present work was to investigate the effects of different analytical pipelines on the age‐related differences in P3 latencies in real data. Therefore, we conducted an explorative multiverse study and varied the low‐pass filter (4 Hz, 8 Hz, 16 Hz, 32 Hz, and no filter), the latency type (area vs. peak), the level of event‐related potential analysis (single participant vs. jackknifing), and the extraction method (manual vs. automated). Thirty young (18–21 years) and 30 old (50–60 years) participants completed three tasks (Nback task, Switching task, Flanker task), while an EEG was recorded. The results show that different analysis strategies can have a tremendous impact on the detection and magnitude of the age effect, with effect sizes ranging from 0% to 88% explained variance. Likewise, regarding the psychometric properties of P3 latencies, we found that the reliabilities fluctuated between rtt = .20 and 1.00, while the homogeneities ranged from rh = −.12 to .90. Based on predefined criteria, we found that the most effective pipelines relied on a manual extraction based on a single participant's data. For peak latencies, manual extraction performed well for all filters except for 4 Hz, while for area latencies, filters above 8 Hz produced desirable results. Furthermore, our findings add to the evidence that jackknifing combined with peak latencies can lead to inconclusive results.