Error reactivity in self-paced performance: Highly-accurate individuals exhibit largest post-error slowing

Abstract

Reaction time is typically increased following an erroneous response. This post-error slowing is traditionally explained by a strategic adjustment of response threshold towards more conservative behaviour. A recently proposed orienting account provides an alternative explanation for post-error slowing. According to this account, committing an error evokes an orienting response (OR), which inhibits information processing in the subsequent trial, resulting in slow and inaccurate performance. We tested a straightforward prediction of the orienting account in the context of self-paced performance, adopting an individual-differences approach: Post-error slowing should be larger the less frequent an error is. To this end, participants were classified into three groups differing in overall performance accuracy. Larger post-error slowing and stronger post-error accuracy decrease were observed for the high-accuracy group than for the two other groups. Practice pronounced the post-error accuracy decline, especially for the high-accuracy group. The results are consistent with the orienting account of post-error slowing but are problematic for accounts based on strategic evaluation mechanisms.

Keywords:

• Post-error slowing
• Orienting response
• Individual differences
• Cognitive control
• Attention
• Performance monitoring

Acknowledgments

We thank Ines Jentzsch (serving as action editor) and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript.

Notes

¹ It should be noted here that errors do not always induce negative effects on performance such as a decline in performance accuracy, but can (under some circumstances) also reactivate an individual's attention to the task at hand, yielding an increase in post-error accuracy (cf. Laming, 1979). A challenge for future research therefore is to reveal and establish particular cases and situations where errors induce either an OR (yielding interference in the subsequent trial) or a real strategic adjustment of the response criterion. Probably, the time available to re-collect the mind after an error is an important prerequisite to observe strategic effects on performance; hence the response–stimulus interval should be considered a critical variable in future error-processing research (cf. Dudschig & Jentzsch, 2009; Jentzsch & Dudschig, 2009).