Impact of Monetary Incentives on Cognitive Performance and Error Monitoring following Sleep Deprivation

Tzu-Hsien Li,Ling-Ling Tsai,Shulan Hsieh

doi:10.1093/sleep/33.4.499

Tzu-Hsien Li, Ling-Ling Tsai + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/33.4.499

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Abstract

To examine whether monetary incentives attenuate the negative effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance in a flanker task that requires higher-level cognitive-control processes, including error monitoring. Twenty-four healthy adults aged 18 to 23 years were randomly divided into 2 subject groups: one received and the other did not receive monetary incentives for performance accuracy. Both subject groups performed a flanker task and underwent electroencephalographic recordings for event-related brain potentials after normal sleep and after 1 night of total sleep deprivation in a within-subject, counterbalanced, repeated-measures study design. Monetary incentives significantly enhanced the response accuracy and reaction time variability under both normal sleep and sleep-deprived conditions, and they reduced the effects of sleep deprivation on the subjective effort level, the amplitude of the error-related negativity (an error-related event-related potential component), and the latency of the P300 (an event-related potential variable related to attention processes). However, monetary incentives could not attenuate the effects of sleep deprivation on any measures of behavior performance, such as the response accuracy, reaction time variability, or posterror accuracy adjustments; nor could they reduce the effects of sleep deprivation on the amplitude of the Pe, another error-related event-related potential component. This study shows that motivation incentives selectively reduce the effects of total sleep deprivation on some brain activities, but they cannot attenuate the effects of sleep deprivation on performance decrements in tasks that require high-level cognitive-control processes. Thus, monetary incentives and sleep deprivation may act through both common and different mechanisms to affect cognitive performance.

Highlights

The results of previous studies have suggested that the decline in vigilance task performance during sleep deprivation is in part related to reduced motivation.[13,14,15] The feedback of the knowledge of results[14,15] and monetary rewards[13] reduce some negative effects of sleep loss on vigilance task performance
Considering that monetary incentives can facilitate the activation of the medial frontal cortex in putatively well-rested subjects[17,19] and can improve the reductions in error monitoring (ERN amplitude, error correction, and posterror slowing) during prolonged task performance,[21] it is likely that monetary incentives can reduce, if not completely block, the effect of sleep deprivation on error monitoring
It was noted that the group that received incentives under the sleep deprivation condition showed greater response accuracy than the group that did not receive incentives under the normal sleep condition

Summary

Introduction

The results of previous studies have suggested that the decline in vigilance task performance during sleep deprivation is in part related to reduced motivation.[13,14,15] The feedback of the knowledge of results[14,15] and monetary rewards[13] reduce some negative effects of sleep loss on vigilance task performance. A previous study[26] has shown that financial penalties for errors increase the performance accuracy, and enhance error detection, as reflected by the increase in the amplitude of event-related negativity (ERN), which is a negative component of the response-locked ERPs and is frontocentrally maximized.[27] As mentioned above, continuous 2-hour task performance results in a reduction in error monitoring, such as in error detection (as reflected by the reduced ERN amplitude), error correction, and posterror slowing.[21] In addition, monetary rewards lead to attenuation of the changes in error monitoring during prolonged task performance. Considering that monetary incentives can facilitate the activation of the medial frontal cortex in putatively well-rested subjects[17,19] and can improve the reductions in error monitoring (ERN amplitude, error correction, and posterror slowing) during prolonged task performance,[21] it is likely that monetary incentives can reduce, if not completely block, the effect of sleep deprivation on error monitoring. Since the flanker task has been frequently used to study error monitoring and was used in this study, we examined whether motivation incentives interacted with sleep deprivation to influence error monitoring

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