Weller Lisa, Schwarz Katharina A, Kunde Wilfried, Pfister Roland
Department of Psychology, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
Psychophysiology. 2018 Jun;55(6):e13057. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13057. Epub 2018 Jan 8.
We often ask other people to carry out actions for us in order to reach our goals. However, these commanded actions may sometimes go awry, and goal attainment is hindered by errors of the following person. Here, we investigated how the commanding person processes these errors of their follower. Because such errors indicate that the original goal of the command is not met, error processing for these actions should be enhanced compared to passively observing another person's actions. Participants thus either commanded another agent to perform one of four key press responses or they passively observed the agent responding. The agent could respond correctly or commit an error in either case. We compared error processing of commanded and passively observed actions using observation-related post-error slowing (oPES) as a behavioral marker and observed-error-related negativity (oN /oERN) and observed-error positivity (oP ) as electrophysiological markers. Whereas error processing, as measured via the oERN, was similarly pronounced for commanded and observed actions, commanded actions gave rise to stronger oPES and a stronger oP . These results suggest that enhanced monitoring is an automatic by-product of commanding another person's actions.
为了实现目标，我们常常要求他人为我们执行某些行动。然而，这些被指令的行动有时可能会出错，目标的达成会因执行者的失误而受阻。在此，我们研究了指令者如何处理其跟随者的这些错误。由于此类错误表明指令的原始目标未达成，与被动观察他人行动相比，对这些行动的错误处理应得到加强。因此，参与者要么指令另一个主体执行四种按键反应之一，要么被动观察该主体做出反应。在这两种情况下，该主体都可能做出正确反应或犯错。我们使用与观察相关的错误后反应减慢（oPES）作为行为指标，以及观察错误相关负波（oN/oERN）和观察错误正波（oP）作为电生理指标，比较了被指令行动和被动观察行动的错误处理情况。尽管通过oERN测量的错误处理在被指令行动和观察行动中表现相似，但被指令行动引发了更强的oPES和更强的oP。这些结果表明，加强监测是指令他人行动的一种自动副产品。
