Brain potentials reveal reduced attention and error-processing during a monetary Go/No-Go task in procrastination

Jarosław M Michałowski,Mathias Weymar,Ewa Wiwatowska

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-75311-2

Jarosław M Michałowski, Mathias Weymar + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75311-2

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Abstract

Procrastination is a self-regulatory problem of voluntarily and destructively delaying intended and necessary or personally important tasks. Previous studies showed that procrastination is associated with executive dysfunctions that seem to be particularly strong in punishing contexts. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study a monetary version of the parametric Go/No-Go task was performed by high and low academic procrastinators to verify the influence of motivational context (reward vs. punishment expectation) and task difficulty (easy vs. hard) on procrastination-related executive dysfunctions. The results revealed increased post-error slowing along with reduced P300 and error-related negativity (ERN) amplitudes in high (vs. low) procrastination participants—effects that indicate impaired attention and error-related processing in this group. This pattern of results did not differ as a function of task difficulty and motivation condition. However, when the task got more difficult executive attention deficits became even more apparent at the behavioral level in high procrastinators, as indexed by increased reaction time variability. The findings substantiate prior preliminary evidence that procrastinators show difficulties in certain aspects of executive functioning (in attention and error processing) during execution of task-relevant behavior, which may be more apparent in highly demanding situations.

Highlights

Procrastination is a self-regulatory problem of voluntarily and destructively delaying intended and necessary or personally important tasks
The second s tudy[25] confirmed the impairment in executive control in procrastinators in the punishment condition. In this functional brain imaging study, we found reduced activations in procrastinators during the whole punishment condition in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, regions that are related to self-control[29]
post-error slowing (PES) and reaction time variability (RTV) were increased during reward (REW) compared to punishment (PUN) condition (F(1,38) = 4.24; p = 0.047; ηp2 = 0.10 for PES; F(1,41) = 6.14; p = 0.017; ηp2 = 0.13 for RTV) and in high difficulty condition (F(1,38) = 7.61; p = 0.009; ηp2 = 0.17 for PES; F(1,41) = 56.78; p < 0.001; ηp2 = 0.58 for RTV)

Summary

Introduction

Procrastination is a self-regulatory problem of voluntarily and destructively delaying intended and necessary or personally important tasks. The results revealed increased post-error slowing along with reduced P300 and error-related negativity (ERN) amplitudes in high (vs low) procrastination participants—effects that indicate impaired attention and error-related processing in this group This pattern of results did not differ as a function of task difficulty and motivation condition. In this functional brain imaging (fMRI) study, we found reduced activations in procrastinators during the whole punishment condition in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), regions that are related to self-control[29] This finding confirmed our previous behavioral data showing that monetary punishment leads to lower executive control in procrastinators. Albeit procrastinators did not show performance deficits in the number of errors in these tasks, the pattern of results suggests that procrastinators are prone to selective executive dysfunctions during expected punishment, as indexed by deficits in post-error slowing and reduced activity of ACC and dlPFC

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