Error adaptation in mental arithmetic

Until now, error and conflict adaptation have been studied extensively using simple laboratory tasks. A common finding is that responses slow down after errors. According to the conflict monitoring theory, performance should also improve after an error. However, this is usually not observed. In this study, we investigated whether the characteristics of the experimental paradigms normally used could explain this absence. More precisely, these paradigms have in common that behavioural adaptation has little room to be expressed. We therefore studied error and conflict adaptation effects in a task that encounters the richness of everyday life's behavioural adaptation--namely, mental arithmetic, where multiple solution strategies are available. In accordance with our hypothesis, we observed that post-error accuracy increases after errors in mental arithmetic. No support for conflict adaptation in mental arithmetic was found. Implications for current theories of conflict and error monitoring are discussed.     

Stimulus conflict predicts conflict adaptation in a numerical flanker task

Conflict monitoring theory states that response conflict triggers conflict adaptation, resulting in reduced congruency effects after response-incongruent trials (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001). Verbruggen, Notebaert, Liefooghe, and Vandierendonck (2006) observed conflict adaptation after stimulus-incongruent trials without any response conflict. In this study, we further explore the hypothesis that stimulus conflict is an important trigger for conflict adaptation. We propose a measure for stimulus conflict that adequately explains the data of Verbruggen et al. and new data from a numerical flanker task. We conclude that stimulus conflict and response conflict have dissociable effects on behavior Whereas response conflict is a good predictor of response times, stimulus conflict is a better predictor of the adaptation effect.     

Conflict and error adaptation in the Simon task

We present recent empirical and theoretical advances in conflict and error monitoring in the Simon task. On the basis of the adaptation by binding account for conflict adaptation and the orienting account for post-error slowing, we predict a dissociation between conflict and error monitoring. This prediction is tested and confirmed as conflict adaptation is task-specific while post-error slowing is not.     

Opposing influences on conflict-driven adaptation in the Eriksen flanker task

Compatibility effects in conflict paradigms are reduced following incompatible trials, and this effect is referred to as conflict adaptation. A perplexing pattern exists, however, with conflict-driven adaptation emerging in several paradigms (e.g., Stroop, Simon) but not consistently in the Eriksen and Eriksen (1974) flanker task. The present experiments address the seemingly elusive presence of conflict adaptation in this task. Experiment 1 shows that a negative-priming-like slowing may be masking conflict adaptation in the flanker task. In Experiment 2, conflict adaptation was revealed when a larger stimulus set designed to reduce negative priming was implemented. Taken together, the findings indicate that a consideration of processes opposing conflict adaptation in the flanker task may help reconcile prior findings.     

Challenge and error: critical events and attention-related errors

Attention lapses resulting from reactivity to task challenges and their consequences constitute a pervasive factor affecting everyday performance errors and accidents. A bidirectional model of attention lapses (error ↔ attention-lapse: Cheyne, Solman, Carriere, & Smilek, 2009) argues that errors beget errors by generating attention lapses; resource-depleting cognitions interfering with attention to subsequent task challenges. Attention lapses lead to errors, and errors themselves are a potent consequence often leading to further attention lapses potentially initiating a spiral into more serious errors. We investigated this challenge-induced error ↔ attention-lapse model using the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART), a GO–NOGO task requiring continuous attention and response to a number series and withholding of responses to a rare NOGO digit. We found response speed and increased commission errors following task challenges to be a function of temporal distance from, and prior performance on, previous NOGO trials. We conclude by comparing and contrasting the present theory and findings to those based on choice paradigms and argue that the present findings have implications for the generality of conflict monitoring and control models.     

Feeling bad about screwing up: emotion regulation and action monitoring in the anterior cingulate cortex

This study examined neural features of emotional responses to errors. We specifically examined whether directed emotion regulation of negative emotion associated with error modulates action-monitoring functions of anterior cingulate cortex, including conflict monitoring, error processing, and error prevention. Seventeen healthy adults performed a continuous performance task during assessment by fMRI. In each block, participants were asked either to increase or decrease their negative emotional responses or to react naturally after error commission. Emotion regulation instructions were associated with modulation of rostral and dorsal anterior activity and of their effective connectivity following errors and conflict. Cingulate activity and connectivity predicted subsequent errors. These data may suggest that responses to errors are affected by emotion and that aspects of emotion and cognition are inextricably linked, even during a nominally cognitive task.     

Errors without conflict: implications for performance monitoring theories of anterior cingulate cortex

Recent theories of the neural basis of performance monitoring have emphasized a central role for the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Replicating an earlier event-related potential (ERP) study, which showed an error feedback negativity that was modeled as having an ACC generator, we used event-related fMRI to investigate whether the ACC would differentiate between correct and incorrect feedback stimuli in a time estimation task. The design controlled for response conflict and frequency and expectancy effects. Although participants in the current study adjusted their performance following error feedback, we did not observe error feedback-evoked ACC activity. In contrast, we did observe ACC activity while the same subjects performed the Stroop task, in which an area of the ACC activated during both conflict and error trials. These findings are inconsistent with previous dipole models of the error feedback negativity, and suggest the ACC may not be involved in the generation of this ERP component. These results question involvement of the ACC in the detection of errors per se when controlling for conflict.     

Gradual increase of perturbation load induces a longer retention of locomotor adaptation in children with cerebral palsy

The goal of this study is to determine whether the size and the variability of error have an impact on the retention of locomotor adaptation in children with cerebral palsy (CP). Eleven children with CP, aged 7–16 years old, were recruited to participate in this study. Three types of force perturbations (i.e., abrupt, gradual and noisy loads) were applied to the right leg above the ankle starting from late stance to mid-swing in three test sessions while the subject walked on a treadmill. Spatial-temporal gait parameters were recorded using a custom designed 3D position sensor during treadmill walking. We observed that children with CP adapted to the resistance force perturbation and showed an aftereffect consisting of increased step length after load release. Further, we observed a longer retention of the aftereffect for the condition with a gradual load than that with an abrupt load. Results from this study suggested that the size of error might have an impact on the retention of motor adaptation in children with CP with a longer retention of motor adaptation for the condition with a small size of error than that with a large error. In addition, enhanced variability of error seems facilitate motor learning during treadmill training. Results from this study may be used for the development of force perturbation based training paradigms for improving walking function in children with CP.     

Now you see it, now you don't: controlling for contingencies and stimulus repetitions eliminates the Gratton effect

The Gratton (or sequential congruency) effect is the finding that conflict effects (e.g., Stroop and Eriksen flanker effects) are larger following congruent trials relative to incongruent trials. The standard account given for this is that a cognitive control mechanism detects conflict when it occurs and adapts to this conflict on the following trial. Others, however, have questioned the conflict adaptation account and suggested that sequential biases might account for the Gratton effect. In two experiments, contingency biases were removed from the task and stimulus repetitions were deleted to control for stimulus bindings. This eliminated the Gratton effect in the response times in both experiments, supporting a non-conflict explanation of the Gratton effect. A Gratton effect did persist in the errors of Experiment 1; however, this effect was not produced by the type of errors (word reading errors) that a conflict adaptation account should predict. Instead, tentative support was found for a congruency switch cost hypothesis. In all, the conflict adaptation account failed to account for any of the reported data. Implications for future work on cognitive control are discussed.     

Performance breakdown effects dissociate from error detection effects in typing

Mistakes in skilled performance are often observed to be slower than correct actions. This error slowing has been associated with cognitive control processes involved in performance monitoring and error detection. A limited literature on skilled actions, however, suggests that preerror actions may also be slower than accurate actions. This contrasts with findings from unskilled, discrete trial tasks, where preerror performance is usually faster than accurate performance. We tested 3 predictions about error-related behavioural changes in continuous typing performance. We asked participants to type 100 sentences without visual feedback. We found that (a) performance before errors was no different in speed than that before correct key-presses, (b) error and posterror key-presses were slower than matched correct key-presses, and (c) errors were preceded by greater variability in speed than were matched correct key-presses. Our results suggest that errors are preceded by a behavioural signature, which may indicate breakdown of fluid cognition, and that the effects of error detection on performance (error and posterror slowing) can be dissociated from breakdown effects (preerror increase in variability).     

错误相关负波（ERN）在精神病理学研究中的应用

错误相关负波（error-related negativity, ERN）是由行为错误诱发的一种脑电波成分,最大峰值在错误反应之后的50ms左右,偶极子源定位于前扣带回（anterior cingulate cortex, ACC）附近。错误加工（error processing）的经典研究范式中出现的ERN成分可能反映了ACC具有错误检测、冲突监控、强化学习、情绪动机等功能。大量研究表明过度的和不足的错误相关脑活动（hyperactive and hypoactive error processing）可能分别与精神病理学的内化性和外化性障碍（internalizing and externalizing disorders）相关联。内化性和外化性障碍的内表型（endophenotype）的研究,还存在许多值得进一步探索的问题。     

The functional equivalence of mental images and errors of movement.

Four experiments are reported demonstrating that mental images are functionally equivalent to physical errors of movement in producing changes in visual-motor coordination, at both central and peripheral levels of the visual-motor system. In the first experiment, subjects in one condition pointed at a target seen through laterally displacing prisms and were instructed to imagine pointing errors identical to those recorded previously for subjects in a separate condition who actually observed their pointing errors. Changes in pointing accuracy during adaptation procedures and visual-motor aftereffects following these procedures for subjects who imagined their errors were proportional to visual-motor shifts and aftereffects for subjects who observed their errors. In the second experiment, these same imagery instructions resulted in identical pointing shifts and aftereffects even in the case where prisms did not displace the target. The third experiment showed that when subjects believe that their mental images of pointing errors do not correspond to their actual pointing errors, pointing aftereffects result that are characteristic of the processing of error information at peripheral, but not central, levels of the visual motor system. The final experiment showed that when subjects do believe that their images of pointing errors correspond to actual pointing errors, but imagine the pointing movement itself in addition to their errors, pointing aftereffects result that are characteristic of the processing of error information at central, but not peripheral, levels of the visual-motor system. Contributions to visual-motor aftereffects from these two levels appear to be additive. Another significant result was that, in the imagery feedback conditions of each experiment, subjects who gave high ratings of vividness to their mental imagery showed the greatest magnitude of pointing aftereffects. These findings establish that mental images for errors of movement can produce stable visual-motor changes that cannot be accounted for simply by subjects' expectations regarding the actual consequences of their actions.     

Cognitive sources of evidence for neuroticism's link to punishment-reactivity processes

Theories of neuroticism emphasise its close potential link to punishment-reactivity processes, yet cognitive sources of evidence for this proposed processing basis are surprisingly scarce. The present two studies (N = 123) sought to rectify this important gap in the literature in terms of reactivity to error feedback. Study 1 found that individuals high in neuroticism were faster to switch behavioural responses following errors, whereas an opposite pattern was found among individuals low in neuroticism. Study 2 extended this error-reactivity perspective to the realm of behavioural decision making. Individuals high in neuroticism switched their behavioural predictions following error feedback, whereas this tendency was non-significant among individuals low in neuroticism. Together, the studies present novel, but theory-informed, cognitive paradigms for assessing punishment-reactivity processes, confirm neuroticism's link to such processes, and do so in the realms of both reaction time (Study 1) and behavioural predictions (Study 2). The discussion focuses on the utility of modelling punishment-reactivity processes in cognitive terms and highlights relevant directions for future research.     

Age-related qualitative differences in post-error cognitive control adjustments

Detecting an error signals the need for increased cognitive control and behavioural adjustments. Considerable development in performance monitoring and cognitive control is evidenced by lower error rates and faster response times in multi-trial executive function tasks with age. Besides these quantitative changes, we were interested in whether qualitative changes in balancing accuracy and speed contribute to developmental progression during elementary school years. We conducted two studies investigating the temporal and developmental trajectories of post-error slowing in three prominent cognitive conflict tasks (Stroop, Simon, and flanker). We instructed children (8-, 10-, and 12-year-old) and adults to respond as fast and as accurately as possible and measured their response times on four trials after correct and incorrect responses to a cognitive conflict. Results revealed that all age groups had longer response times on post-error versus post-correct trials, reflecting post-error slowing. Critically, slowing on the first post-error trial declined with age, suggesting an age-related reduction in the orienting response towards errors. This age effect diminished on subsequent trials, suggesting more fine-tuned cognitive control adjustments with age. Overall, the consistent pattern across tasks suggests an age-related change from a relatively strong orienting response to more balanced cognitive control adaptations.     

Questioning conflict adaptation: proportion congruent and Gratton effects reconsidered

Conflict adaptation is one of the most popular ideas in cognitive psychology. It purports to explain a wide range of data, including both brain and behavioral data from the proportion congruent and Gratton paradigms. However, in recent years, many concerns about the viability of this account have been raised. It has been argued that contingency learning, not conflict adaptation, produces the proportion congruent effect. Similarly, the Gratton paradigm has been shown to contain several confounds—most notably, feature repetition biases. Newer work on temporal learning further calls into question the interpretability of the behavioral results of conflict adaptation studies. Brain data linking supposed conflict adaptation to the anterior cingulated cortex has also come into question, since this area seems to be responsive solely to time-on-task, rather than conflict. This review points to the possibility that conflict adaptation may simply be an illusion. However, the extant data remain ambiguous, and there are a lot of open questions that still need to be addressed in future research.     

Multiple cognitive control effects of error likelihood and conflict

Recent work on cognitive control has suggested a variety of performance monitoring functions of the anterior cingulate cortex such as errors, conflict, error likelihood, and others. Given the variety of monitoring effects, a corresponding variety of control effects on behavior might be expected. This paper explores whether conflict and error likelihood produce distinct cognitive control effects on behavior, as measured by response time. A Change signal task (Brown & Braver, Science 307:1118–1121, 2005) was modified to include conditions of likely errors due to tardy as well as premature responses in conditions with and without conflict. The results discriminate between competing hypotheses of independent versus interacting conflict and error likelihood control effects. Specifically, the results suggest that the likelihood of premature versus tardy response errors can lead to multiple distinct control effects, which are independent of cognitive control effects driven by response conflict. As a whole, the results point to the existence of multiple distinct cognitive control mechanisms and challenge existing models of cognitive control that incorporate only a single control signal.     

Common mechanisms in error monitoring and action effect monitoring

In the present study, we considered error-related brain activity in event-related potentials, to investigate the relationship between error monitoring—that is, the detection and evaluation of erroneous responses—and action effect monitoring—that is, monitoring of the sensory consequences of behavior. To this end, participants worked on a task-switching paradigm that consisted of a free-choice task, in which a puzzle piece had to be attached to an existing one (the prime task), and a subsequent color flanker task (the probe task). We examined whether unexpected action effects in the prime task would affect the subsequent error monitoring in the probe task. We found the neural correlates of error monitoring during the probe task, the error-related negativity as well as the error positivity, to be increased after unexpected action effects in the prime task. In contrast, the neural correlates of visual attention were decreased after unexpected action effects, in line with recent findings on an attenuation of sensory processing after errors. Our results demonstrate a direct link between monitoring processes in the two tasks. We propose that both error monitoring and action effect monitoring rely on a common generic monitoring system related to novelty detection or affective processing. Preactivating this system by means of unexpected action effects increases the sensitivity for detecting an error in the subsequent task.     

错误相关负波的神经起源及其影响因素

与个体做出错误反应相伴的错误相关ERP成分叫错误相关负波 (error-related negativity, ERN),当前冲突监控理论、表征失匹配理论和强化学习理论从不同的角度对ERN的神经机制进行解释,各理论间并非完全相互排斥。目前大部分研究认为ERN定位于扣带回,部分研究则出现其它脑区的激活,然而,扣带回与其它脑区存在复杂的神经功能联系,ERN 电位很可能是多个脑区电活动在头颅的综合表现,而非某一脑区的单独表现。ERN的神经机制受到实验任务、被试年龄及其意识水平等因素的影响。未来要推动实验室研究走向临床应用,发现与诊断脑电波异常的病人和毒品易复吸人群。     

From Monroe to Moreau: an analysis of face naming errors.

Functional models of face recognition and speech production have developed separately. However, naming a familiar face is, of course, an act of speech production. In this paper we propose a revision of Bruce and Young's (1986) model of face processing, which incorporates two features of Levelt's (1989) model of speech production. In particular, the proposed model includes two stages of lexical access for names and monitoring of face naming based on a "perceptual loop". Two predictions were derived from the perceptual loop hypothesis of speech monitoring: (1) naming errors in which a (correct) rare surname is erroneously replaced by a common surname should occur more frequently than the reverse substitution (the error asymmetry effect); (2) naming errors in which a common surname is articulated are more likely to be repaired than errors which result in articulation of a rare surname (the error-repairing effect). Both predictions were supported by an analysis of face naming errors in a laboratory face naming task. In a further experiment we considered the possibility that the effects of surname frequency observed in face naming errors could be explained by the frequency sensitivity of lexical access in speech production. However, no effect of the frequency of the surname of the faces used in the previous experiment was found on face naming latencies. Therefore, it is concluded that the perceptual loop hypothesis provides the more parsimonious account of the entire pattern of the results.     

Stimulus- and response-conflict-induced cognitive control in the flanker task

Recently, several studies have been conducted to investigate the top-down adjustments made after incongruent trials during conflict tasks. In the present study, we investigated conflict monitoring with different types of conflict. In a modified version of the flanker task, a distinction was made between stimulus—stimulus conflict and stimulus—response conflict. Six colors were mapped to three responses in order to exclude all sequences in which a relevant or an irrelevant stimulus- or response-related feature was repeated from trialn−1 to trialn. An analysis of the effect of the congruency of the previous trial demonstrated that conflict adaptation was present. The stimulus congruency effect was reduced after both a stimulus-incongruent trial and a response-incongruent trial. The response congruency effect did not vary as a function of previous congruency. These findings are discussed in relation to the distinction between conflict detection and conflict regulation.