Error Awareness Can Occur in the Absence of an Error-Related Negativity

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Neuropsychology
• Psychophysiology

Background:

• Error-related brain activity includes early error signals (Ne/ERN) and later error awareness (Pe).
• Previous research suggests the Ne/ERN and Pe may arise from independent neural systems.
• A target-masking paradigm can dissociate these components, eliciting Pe without Ne/ERN.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if error awareness can emerge independently of the Ne/ERN.
• To explore the relationship between metacognitive error signaling and the Pe component.
• To provide further evidence for distinct neural systems underlying error monitoring.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a modified flanker paradigm with a target-masking technique to create an invisible-target condition.
• Participants performed metacognitive judgments to signal error occurrence on each trial.
• Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to analyze Ne/ERN and Pe components.

Main Results:

• The majority of participants successfully signaled detectable errors in the invisible-target condition.
• Error signaling and the Pe component were observed even in the absence of the Ne/ERN.
• These findings indicate that error awareness and Pe are not dependent on the Ne/ERN.

Conclusions:

• Error awareness, indicated by metacognitive signaling, and the Pe component are independent of the early Ne/ERN signal.
• The study confirms the existence of two distinct systems for error monitoring.
• These independent systems contribute to our understanding of cognitive control and error processing.