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Error awareness and post-error slowing: The effect of manipulating trial intervals
Gezelle Dali1, Catherine Orr1, Robert Hester1
1Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Vic., Australia.
Consciousness and Cognition
|January 27, 2022
Summary
Post-error slowing, a cognitive control process, shows a weak link to error awareness, especially under dynamic task conditions. These effects are transient, appearing only on the first trial after an error.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Post-error slowing is traditionally linked to conscious error recognition, but empirical evidence is inconsistent.
- Task demands and trial timing may influence the relationship between error awareness and post-error slowing.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate the role of error awareness in post-error slowing.
- Examine how dynamic task conditions (lure trial intervals) affect this relationship.
- Determine if post-error slowing is contingent upon task constraints and persists over trials.
Main Methods:
- Experiments utilized an error awareness task with three dynamic conditions: standard (random), proximal (closely spaced), and distal (widely spaced) lure trials.
- Manipulated inter-trial intervals to assess the impact of temporal spacing on error processing.
- Analyzed reaction times and accuracy in relation to error awareness and lure trial conditions.
Main Results:
- Error awareness and post-error slowing demonstrated a weak relationship under dynamic lure interval conditions.
- The standard condition (random lure trials) exhibited the greatest post-error slowing but lowest accuracy.
- Excluding the first post-error trial abolished all observed effects, indicating transient adjustments.
Conclusions:
- The relationship between error awareness and post-error slowing is weakly contingent on task constraints like trial timing.
- Post-error slowing effects are transient and primarily observed on the first trial after an error.
- Findings support non-functional accounts, suggesting post-error slowing and cognitive control are separable and not necessarily dependent on error awareness.
