School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9JP, Scotland, UK.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2012 Dec;19(6):1210-6. doi: 10.3758/s13423-012-0314-y.
People tend to slow down after mistakes. This posterror slowing (PES) has commonly been explained by a change to a more conservative response threshold to avoid future errors. Alternatively, the attention-orienting account posits that all infrequent, surprising events (including errors) elicit an orienting response followed by a time-consuming process of task reorientation, explaining PES without increased response caution. In the present study, we employed both behavioral and electrophysiological measures to compare the predictions of these accounts using a flanker paradigm in which accurate or false external response feedback was provided. Participants demonstrated typical posterror adjustments, responding more slowly and accurately in posterror than in postcorrect trials. This finding provides initial evidence suggesting that posterror adjustments are motivated by the avoidance of subsequent mistakes. Most importantly, PES and an event-related potential relating to the attentional processing of feedback, the feedback-related P300 (f-P300), were modulated by feedback type. More specifically, the f-P300 was larger after false than after accurate feedback, suggesting that participants oriented their attention toward (i.e., were surprised by) inaccurate feedback signals. Interestingly, false feedback differentially modulated reaction times: Participants were slower after correct responses when feedback falsely informed of an error rather than confirmed the correct response. In contrast, faster responses were made after errors when feedback falsely indicated correct rather than incorrect performance. When these patterns of results are regarded together, they are best explained by theories of cognitive control in which posterror adjustments in choice reaction time tasks are assumed to reflect control processes leading to more conservative performance after error signals.
人们在犯错后往往会放慢速度。这种错误后减速（PES）通常被解释为反应阈值的变化，以更保守的方式避免未来的错误。或者，注意导向理论认为，所有罕见的、令人惊讶的事件（包括错误）都会引发定向反应，然后是一个耗时的任务重新定向过程，无需增加反应谨慎即可解释 PES。在本研究中，我们使用行为和电生理测量来比较这些解释的预测，使用侧翼范式，其中提供准确或错误的外部反应反馈。参与者表现出典型的错误后调整，在错误后比在正确后试验中反应更慢、更准确。这一发现提供了初步证据，表明错误后调整是为了避免随后的错误。最重要的是，PES 和与反馈注意处理相关的事件相关电位，即反馈相关 P300（f-P300），受反馈类型的调节。更具体地说，错误反馈后的 f-P300 比准确反馈后的 f-P300 更大，这表明参与者将注意力转向（即对不准确的反馈信号感到惊讶）。有趣的是，错误反馈对反应时间有不同的调节作用：当反馈错误地报告错误而不是确认正确的反应时，参与者在正确反应后的反应时间较慢；相反，当反馈错误地表示正确而不是错误的表现时，错误后的反应时间更快。当这些结果模式一起考虑时，它们最好用认知控制理论来解释，在该理论中，选择反应时间任务中的错误后调整被认为反映了控制过程，这些控制过程导致在错误信号后表现出更保守的行为。
