Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Italy.
Cortex. 2019 Nov;120:92-100. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2019.05.015. Epub 2019 Jun 15.
According to available evidence, after making an erroneous decision people tend to slow down on the next decision. This empirical regularity, known as "post error slowing" (PES), has been traditionally interpreted as the result of a conservative response criterion adopted to avoid future errors and it is supposed to be driven by changes in the excitability of the motor system. However, the consequences of errors have been almost exclusively investigated by means of button-press tasks, which have been criticized because of their limited ecological validity and it is still unclear to what extent errors bias the motor system activity during the planning and the on-line control of complex and realistic goal-directed actions. To overcome these potential limitations, in the present study, we investigated the effect of errors on the preparation and execution of the reach-to-grasp movement, one of the most significant daily life actions. In addition to reaction times (RTs), we measured motor-evoked potential (MEP) to explore the influence of errors on corticospinal (CS) excitability, and we applied kinematical analysis to examine the underlying reorganization of the movement following an error. The results of the present study showed that MEPs tend to be reduced after the failure to reach and grasp an object, supporting the traditional interpretation of PES. Furthermore, in addition to RTs, we found that error-reactivity strategically influences the grasping component of the action, whereas the reaching component appears to be impermeable to PES. These findings demonstrate that the error-reactivity is a strong empirical phenomenon, which spreads into the motor system at the level of both movement preparation and execution, even when more realistic and ecologically valid tasks are used.
根据现有证据，人们在做出错误决策后往往会在下一个决策中放慢速度。这种经验规律被称为“错误后减速”（PES），传统上被解释为为避免未来错误而采用的保守决策标准的结果，它应该是由运动系统兴奋性的变化驱动的。然而，错误的后果几乎完全是通过按钮按压任务来研究的，这些任务因其生态有效性有限而受到批评，而且目前尚不清楚错误在多大程度上会影响复杂和现实的目标导向动作的规划和在线控制期间对运动系统活动的影响。为了克服这些潜在的局限性，在本研究中，我们研究了错误对伸手抓握动作（日常生活中最重要的动作之一）的准备和执行的影响。除了反应时间（RT），我们还测量了运动诱发电位（MEP），以探索错误对皮质脊髓（CS）兴奋性的影响，并且我们应用运动学分析来检查在错误后运动的潜在重新组织。本研究的结果表明，在未能到达和抓住物体后，MEP 往往会降低，这支持了 PES 的传统解释。此外，除了 RT，我们发现错误反应策略性地影响动作的抓握成分，而到达成分似乎不受 PES 的影响。这些发现表明，错误反应是一种强烈的经验现象，即使使用更现实和生态有效的任务，它也会在运动系统的准备和执行两个层面上扩散。
