APA Dictionary of Psychology

in conditioning, denoting two-stimulus discrimination procedures in which a particular action is reinforced in the presence of one stimulus (the go stimulus) and not reinforced in the presence of the other (the no-go stimulus). In neurological assessment, a go/no-go task assesses the ability to inhibit a simple motor response after it has been established. A common go/no-go task requires the participant to display two fingers when the examiner presents one finger (go) and to display no fingers when the examiner presents two fingers (no-go). Performance on these tasks is generally impaired following frontal lobe damage or disease.