Neural and behavioral traces of error awareness
- PDF / 2,096,168 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 118 Downloads / 220 Views
Neural and behavioral traces of error awareness Hans Kirschner 1,2 & Jil Humann 3 & Jan Derrfuss 4 & Claudia Danielmeier 4 & Markus Ullsperger 1,5 Accepted: 21 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Monitoring for errors and behavioral adjustments after errors are essential for daily life. A question that has not been addressed systematically yet, is whether consciously perceived errors lead to different behavioral adjustments compared to unperceived errors. Our goal was to develop a task that would enable us to study different commonly observed neural correlates of error processing and post-error adjustments in their relation to error awareness and accuracy confidence in a single experiment. We assessed performance in a new number judgement error awareness task in 70 participants. We used multiple, robust, single-trial EEG regressions to investigate the link between neural correlates of error processing (e.g., error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe)) and error awareness. We found that only aware errors had a slowing effect on reaction times in consecutive trials, but this slowing was not accompanied by post-error increases in accuracy. On a neural level, error awareness and confidence had a modulating effect on both the ERN and Pe, whereby the Pe was most predictive of participants’ error awareness. Additionally, we found partial support for a mediating role of error awareness on the coupling between the ERN and behavioral adjustments in the following trial. Our results corroborate previous findings that show both an ERN/Pe and a post-error behavioral adaptation modulation by error awareness. This suggests that conscious error perception can support meta-control processes balancing the recruitment of proactive and reactive control. Furthermore, this study strengthens the role of the Pe as a robust neural index of error awareness. Keywords Error awareness . Post-error adjustments . EEG . Metacognition . Error monitoring
Introduction Monitoring for errors is important for successful functioning in daily life. It enables the initiation of remedial actions when something goes wrong and prevents making the same errors over and over again. The ability to monitor and control cogniHans Kirschner and Jil Humann contributed equally to this work. Claudia Danielmeier and Markus Ullsperger jointly supervised this work. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-020-00838-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Hans Kirschner [email protected]
tive processes has been termed metacognition. Metacognition is important to guide our behavior and is well-developed in humans (Fleming, Huijgen and Dolan, 2012; Shea et al., 2014). Sometimes, however, mistakes remain undetected, especially when tasks are complex. In this study, we focus on conscious error perception as a form of metacognition. Research explictily addressing conscious perception of errors, or “error awareness,” has been relatively sparse. The lite
Data Loading...
