Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA.
Psychophysiology. 2024 Dec;61(12):e14694. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14694. Epub 2024 Sep 28.
Error monitoring is essential for detecting errors and may facilitate behavioral adjustments that can reduce or prevent future errors. At times, error monitoring must occur while individuals are engaged in other, cognitively demanding tasks that might consume processing resources necessary for error monitoring. Here, we set out to determine whether concurrent working memory (WM) load interferes with error monitoring, as measured using event-related potentials, the error-related negativity (Ne/ERN), and error positivity (Pe). Fifty-four participants (n = 33 female) completed an arrowhead flanker task, with trials presented under low (2 letter) or high (6 letter) WM load. Participants were required to hold letter strings in memory and to recall these letters at the end of a set of flanker trials. Results showed that WM load reduced the Pe but did not affect the Ne/ERN. Therefore, WM load appeared to attenuate later, more elaborated stages of error processing, though initial error detection was unaffected. Additionally, high WM load slowed reaction times overall, but did not lead to a significant increase in errors. As such, slower responses may have helped participants maintain comparable accuracy for low-load versus high-load trials. Overall, results indicate that WM load interferes with the evaluation of error significance, which could interfere with behavioral adaptations over time.
错误监控对于检测错误至关重要，并且可能有助于进行行为调整，从而减少或预防未来的错误。有时，当个体从事其他认知要求高的任务时，必须进行错误监控，而这些任务可能会消耗错误监控所需的处理资源。在这里，我们旨在确定工作记忆（WM）负荷是否会干扰使用事件相关电位、错误相关负性（Ne/ERN）和错误正性（Pe）来测量的错误监控。54 名参与者（n=33 名女性）完成了箭头侧翼任务，实验在低 WM 负荷（2 个字母）或高 WM 负荷（6 个字母）下进行。参与者需要在记忆中保留字母串，并在一组侧翼任务结束后回忆这些字母。结果表明，WM 负荷降低了 Pe，但对 Ne/ERN 没有影响。因此，WM 负荷似乎减弱了错误处理的后期、更精细的阶段，尽管初始错误检测不受影响。此外，高 WM 负荷总体上减慢了反应时间，但并未导致错误明显增加。因此，较慢的反应可能有助于参与者在低负荷和高负荷试验中保持可比的准确性。总体而言，结果表明 WM 负荷会干扰对错误重要性的评估，从而可能会干扰随着时间的推移进行的行为适应。
