Abstract
Background: Error awareness (EA) and post-error slowing (PES) are two crucial components of an adequate performance monitoring because, respectively, they allow being aware of an error and triggering performance adjustments following unexpected events.Objective: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the ontogenetic trajectories of EA and PES, as well as to examine how EA and PES interact with each other.Methods: The performance of three groups of participants (children, younger, and older adults) in a modified version of the Error Awareness task (EAT; Hester et al., 2005) was compared. In particular, in this study not only variations of the average performance were examined, but also intra-individual variability (IIV), considered in terms of variations of SD and ex-Gaussian parameters (mu, sigma, and tau).Results: Two distinct ontogenetic trajectories of EA and PES were observed. Regarding EA, we observe a U-shaped curve that describes an increase of the process from childhood to early adulthood and a progressive reduction advancing age in late adulthood. Furthermore, a greater IIV in older adults indicated a susceptibility of EA to the aging process. The ontogenetic trajectory of PES seems substantially different from the trajectory that describes EA since in PES we do not observe age-related differences.Conclusion: These results suggest that EA and PES are two independent processes. Furthermore, it appears that EA and PES are differently prone to short-term fluctuations in performance across the lifespan. While EA presents an increase in IIV in aging, PES seems to be immune to these changes.
Highlights
The ability to monitor our performance, and our errors, is essential in everyday life
With the goal to identify the ontogenetic trajectories of error awareness (EA) and posterror slowing (PES), the present study reports new evidence from healthy subjects of different age-groups, where EA and PES have been analyzed in terms of both intra and inter-individual variability
Regarding EA, we suggest the existence of a U-shaped curve that describes an increase of the process from childhood to early adulthood and a progressive reduction advancing age in late adulthood
Summary
The ability to monitor our performance, and our errors, is essential in everyday life. Among the processes that constitute performance monitoring, the most representative and investigated phenomena are posterror slowing (PES) and error awareness (EA). Both these two phenomena have been widely studied in the literature, from several interesting points of view. Post-error slowing is the motor slowing that usually occurs after errors, and was described for the first time in 1966 by Rabbitt, who reported significant slower reaction times (RTs) after erroneous responses than mean RTs of all correct responses (Rabbitt, 1966) From this first evidence, other studies have reported PES in different kinds of task, for instance Stroop, Simon, Flanker or categorization tasks (for a review, Danielmeier and Ullsperger, 2011). Error awareness (EA) and post-error slowing (PES) are two crucial components of an adequate performance monitoring because, respectively, they allow being aware of an error and triggering performance adjustments following unexpected events
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
