Size does matter! Perceptual stimulus properties affect event-related potentials during feedback processing.

Abstract

The current study investigated whether or not the physical aspect of stimulus size has an effect on neuronal correlates of feedback processing. A time estimation task was administered applying three different feedback stimulus categories: small, middle, and large size stimuli. Apart from early visual ERPs such as P1 and N1 components, later feedback processing stages were also affected by the size of feedback stimuli. In particular, small size stimuli compared to middle and large size ones led to diminished amplitudes in both FRN and P300 components, despite intact discrimination between negative and positive outcomes in these two ERPs. In contrast, time estimation performance was not influenced by feedback size. The current results indicate that small size feedback stimuli were perceived as less salient and hence were processed less deeply than the others. This suggests that future feedback studies could manipulate feedback salience simply by presenting differently sized feedback stimuli, at least when the focus lies on FRN and P300 amplitude variation.