Neurocognitive Development Unit, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, WA, Australia.
Dev Psychobiol. 2011 Apr;53(3):256-65. doi: 10.1002/dev.20518. Epub 2010 Nov 17.
Childhood is associated with improvements in task accuracy, response time, and reductions in intraindividual trial-to-trial variability in reaction times. The aims of this study were to investigate neural indicators of error monitoring to better understand the mechanisms underlying these cognitive developments in primary school aged children. Specifically, this study explored the development of error processing in 36 children aged 7 years and 41 children aged 9 years, as indexed by two electrophysiological indices of error processing, the error-related negativity (ERN) and the error positivity (Pe). Notably, the amplitude and latency of the ERN and Pe did not differ significantly between the age groups. However, intraindividual variability in response time (RT) was strongly related to ERN amplitude. These data suggest the utility of comparing neural and behavioral indicators of cognitive performance in children and uniquely highlight the importance of considering intraindividual variability in task performance in studies that explore error processing.
儿童期与任务准确性的提高、反应时的缩短以及个体内反应时的trial-to-trial 变异性的降低有关。本研究的目的是研究错误监测的神经指标，以更好地理解小学生认知发展的机制。具体来说，本研究通过两种错误处理的电生理指标，即错误相关负波（ERN）和错误正波（Pe），探索了 36 名 7 岁儿童和 41 名 9 岁儿童的错误处理发展。值得注意的是，年龄组之间的 ERN 和 Pe 的幅度和潜伏期没有显著差异。然而，反应时（RT）的个体内变异性与 ERN 幅度呈强相关。这些数据表明，在儿童中比较神经和行为认知表现指标的有效性，并特别强调在探索错误处理的研究中考虑任务表现的个体内变异性的重要性。
