Lavro Dmitri, Levin Danny, Klein Christoph, Berger Andrea
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018 May;186:8-17. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.04.001. Epub 2018 Apr 13.
After making an error, we usually slow down before our next response. This phenomenon is known as the posterror slowing (PES) effect. It has been interpreted to be an indicator of posterror behavioral adjustments and, therefore, has been linked to cognitive control. However, contradictory findings regarding PES and posterror accuracy cast doubt on such a relation. To determine whether behavior is adjusted after making an error, we investigated other features of behavior, such as the distribution of response times (RT) in a mental arithmetic task. Participants performed an arithmetic task with (Experiments 1 and 2) and without (Experiment 1) an accuracy-tracking procedure. On both tasks, participants responded more slowly and less accurately after errors. However, the RT distribution was more symmetrical on posterror trials compared to postcorrect trials, suggesting that a change in processing mode occurred after making an error, thus linking cognitive control to error monitoring, even in cases when accuracy decreased after errors. These findings expand our understanding on how posterror behavior is adjusted in mental arithmetic, and we propose that the measures of the RT distribution can be further used in other domains of error-monitoring research.
犯错后，我们通常会在下一次反应前放慢速度。这种现象被称为错误后减缓（PES）效应。它被解释为错误后行为调整的一个指标，因此与认知控制有关。然而，关于PES和错误后准确性的矛盾发现对这种关系提出了质疑。为了确定犯错后行为是否会调整，我们研究了行为的其他特征，比如在一项心算任务中反应时间（RT）的分布。参与者在有（实验1和2）和没有（实验1）准确性跟踪程序的情况下执行一项算术任务。在这两项任务中，参与者犯错后的反应都更慢且准确性更低。然而，与正确反应后的试验相比，错误反应后的试验中RT分布更对称，这表明犯错后处理模式发生了变化，从而将认知控制与错误监测联系起来，即使在犯错后准确性下降的情况下也是如此。这些发现扩展了我们对心算中错误后行为如何调整的理解，并且我们提出RT分布的测量方法可以在错误监测研究的其他领域中进一步使用。
