Processing Of Performance Feedback Research Articles

Altered Putamen Activation for Social Comparison-Related Feedback in Social Anxiety Disorder: A Pilot Study

Introduction: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by abnormal processing of performance-related social stimuli. Previous studies have shown altered emotional experiences and activations of different sub-regions of the striatum during processing of social stimuli in patients with SAD. However, whether and to what extent social comparisons affect behavioural and neural responses to feedback stimuli in patients with SAD is unknown. Materials and Methods: To address this issue, emotional ratings and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) responses were assessed while patients suffering from SAD and healthy controls (HC) were required to perform a choice task and received performance feedback (correct, incorrect, non-informative) that varied in relation to the performance of fictitious other participants (a few, half, or most of others had the same outcome). Results: Across all performance feedback conditions, fMRI analyses revealed reduced activations in bilateral putamen when feedback was assumed to be received by only a few compared to half of the other participants in patients with SAD. Nevertheless, analysis of rating data showed a similar modulation of valence and arousal ratings in patients with SAD and HC depending on social comparison-related feedback. Conclusions: This suggests altered neural processing of performance feedback depending on social comparisons in patients with SAD.

Unfinished business: integrating individual decision-makers' experience and incentives to organizational performance feedback theory.

In this study, we analyze the role of individual decision-makers in organizational decision-making that is described by the Carnegie perspective. In particular, building on the Behavioral Theory of the Firm, we analyze the influence of decision-makers on organizational responses to performance feedback. Managers in organizations can influence the performance feedback process through their individual experiences. Moreover, they are motivated and controlled by incentives, which is another mechanism by which organizational decision-making can be influenced by individuals. While the Carnegie perspective acknowledges that decision-makers interpret performance feedback and initiate organizational responses, individuals are not as closely integrated to the organizational performance feedback process as some other-mostly organizational-conditions. Recently, several intriguing empirical studies have addressed the role of experience and incentives in the performance feedback process. However, their cumulative effect remained impossible to assess. We meta-analytically review 205 BTOF studies to test our hypotheses on the influence of decision-makers' experience and incentives on organizational responses to performance feedback. We show that decision-makers' job experience and domain expertise influence organizational responses to performance below aspirations, while incentives and compensation become relevant when performance is above aspirations. These results highlight the importance of individual decision-makers in explaining variations in organizational performance feedback decisions, offering exciting venues for psychology scholars to contribute to the Carnegie perspective.

Integrating national culture into the organizational performance feedback theory

The organizational response to performance feedback is a collective process in which groups of decision-makers face uncertainty about the future when making organizational decisions based on past performance feedback. Culture is an important variable to explain the context of collective decision processes, but it is not well understood by Organizational Performance Feedback Theory (PFT) research. The current internationalization trend of PFT research poses the question if empirical results are comparable across different cultural settings, and whether culture is a general condition of organizational performance feedback. We analyze the role of national culture as a proxy for collective interpretive processes that influence the organizational decision-making process in response to performance feedback, and we resolve some of the unexplained variances in the empirical results. We use a meta-analysis to understand if national culture poses a general condition for the organizational performance feedback process. We analyze the empirical results of 153 PFT studies covering organizations from 16 countries, and we examine the impact of four dimensions of national culture: uncertainty avoidance, performance orientation, future orientation, and institutional collectivism. We demonstrate that national culture is an important concept for PFT development.

Altered functional connectivity during performance feedback processing in multiple sclerosis

Effective learning from performance feedback is vital for adaptive behavior regulation necessary for successful cognitive performance. Yet, how this learning operates in clinical groups that experience cognitive dysfunction is not well understood. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune, degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized by physical and cognitive dysfunction. A highly prevalent impairment in MS is cognitive fatigue (CF). CF is associated with altered functioning within cortico-striatal regions that also facilitate feedback-based learning in neurotypical (NT) individuals. Despite this cortico-striatal overlap, research about feedback-based learning in MS, its associated neural underpinnings, and its sensitivity to CF, are all lacking. The present study investigated feedback-based learning ability in MS, as well as associated cortico-striatal function and connectivity. MS and NT participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paired-word association task during which they received trial-by-trial monetary, non-monetary, and uninformative performance feedback. Despite reporting greater CF throughout the task, MS participants displayed comparable task performance to NTs, suggesting preserved feedback-based learning ability in the MS group. Both groups recruited the ventral striatum (VS), caudate nucleus, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to the receipt of performance feedback, suggesting that people with MS also recruit cortico-striatal regions during feedback-based learning. However, compared to NT participants, MS participants also displayed stronger functional connectivity between the VS and task-relevant regions, including the left angular gyrus and right superior temporal gyrus, in response to feedback receipt. Results indicate that CF may not interfere with feedback-based learning in MS. Nonetheless, people with MS may recruit alternative connections with the striatum to assist with this form of learning. These findings have implications for cognitive rehabilitation treatments that incorporate performance feedback to remediate cognitive dysfunction in clinical populations.

R&D Intensity: What to Expect When Family and Non-Family Firms Underperformed?

The main purpose of our study is to test the R&D investment decision-making process of family and non-family enterprises, especially focus on their R&D investment differences under extreme below performance aspiration (EBPA). And we further discuss the regulatory mechanism of unabsorbed slack on performance feedback process. The results show that: first, in the range of EBPA, the R&D investment intensity of non-family enterprises will decrease with the increase of negative performance aspiration, while that of family enterprises will accelerate with the increase of negative performance aspiration. (2) Unabsorbed slack could enhance the positive relationship between performance aspiration gap and R&D investment intensity of family business, while for non-family business, it would weaken the negative relationship between aspiration gap and R&D investment intensity.

Considering the Manager in Performance Feedback Theory: Towards a Multi-Level Theory

The Performance Feedback Theory (PFT) explains how organizational responses are motivated by organizational performance above and below aspirations. As such, it is formulated as an organization-level theory. However, numerous researchers directly or implicitly refer to individual-level theories and factors when developing empirical models or interpreting empirical results. Drawing on 114 empirical PFT studies, we address these incongruences and explore the empirical PFT literature to better understand the role of an individual-level perspective in explaining organizational performance feedback. Our review of the empirical PFT literature highlights the confusion about the role of the individual decision-maker in PFT models. We perform a meta-analysis to quantitatively separate effects of individual-level factors (and theories) from organizational-level factors (and theories) on organizational responses to performance feedback. We demonstrate that the effects of individual and organizational factors differ for performance above and below aspirations. We present empirical evidence suggesting the conceptual necessity for a multi-level theory (individual and organizational) to more precisely explain the organizational performance feedback process. This result provides an opportunity for future empirical studies to further explore specific individual-level factors and to extend the PFT.

Aspiration Adaptation to Multiple Performance Comparisons: Generic Strategy as Information Filter

When adapting aspirations, managers compare their firm’s performance to their own past aspirations and to performances of social reference groups. In this paper, we explore how firms adapt their aspirations in response to comparison with three social reference groups and argue that generic strategy functions as a filter in the process of interpreting performance feedback. In a longitudinal sample of U.S. airline companies, we show that low cost or differentiation strategy moderates the performance feedback process in that firms with a well-defined generic strategy are heavily influenced by their own performance feedback when underperforming and the social reference groups that most closely align with themselves when overperforming.

Performance feedback and problemistic search: The moderating effects of managerial and board outsiderness

Extending the research on performance feedback and problemistic search, which theorizes that firm performance below the aspiration level triggers organizational search behaviors, this study examines how the inside-outside distinction of the firm management team and board members can influence the allocation of organizational attention to the performance feedback process. A longitudinal study of Korean manufacturing firms demonstrates that while a firm management team's outside experience intensifies the firm's R&D investment in response to underperformance, this effect is substituted by the presence of outside directors on the board. Our results indicate that both managers and board members can have notable influence on performance feedback and suggest that performance feedback research should examine the factors that affect the attention processing of key decision makers.

Perceptions of supervisor competence, perceived employee mobility, and abusive supervision

PurposeIn response to the call for deeper investigation of abusive supervision (Martinko et al., 2013), the purpose of this paper is to examine perceived supervisor competence and perceived employee mobility (an individual’s perception of his/her ability to obtain new employment) to better understand contextual and individual factors that potentially influence the degree of harmful supervisory behaviors experienced by employees.Design/methodology/approachResponses from 749 survey participants were analyzed to determine the impact of perceived supervisor competence and perceived employee mobility on perceptions of abusive supervisory conduct. A bootstrapping-based mediation analysis (Hayes, 2012) was used to test for mediation by the variables of interest.FindingsThe authors found that perceived supervisor competence is associated with weakened perceptions of abusive supervision, and that this relationship is partially mediated by respondents’ perceived occupational mobility.Research limitations/implicationsThe data are cross-sectional and were collected with a self-report questionnaire and compiled utilizing student-enumerators. The sample was also regional in scope and lacked information that would indicate if respondents were also supervisors.Practical implicationsThese results imply that perceptions of abusive supervision can be mitigated by building stronger competencies in supervisors, which translates into greater individual employee perceived mobility. Human resource (HR) professionals can implement practices to decrease the likelihood of abusive supervisory conduct by ensuring that supervisors are competent in their jobs, facilitating a coaching/mentoring process between supervisors and subordinates and establishing/maintaining an effective developmental performance feedback process for supervisors.Social implicationsSince perceived supervisor competence is one element of reducing abusive conduct, while also enhancing subordinate perceived mobility, selection and training efforts should focus on hiring and preparing individuals to be effective work supervisors. Enhancing worker capabilities and marketability may result in greater perceived occupational mobility and reduced perceptions of abuse by supervisors.Originality/valueThese results lend support to the argument that perceptions of abusive supervision can be mitigated by building stronger competencies in supervisors, which translates into greater perceived mobility among employees. Organizations may benefit through lowered employee turnover, employees may enjoy more harmonious, supportive relationships with their supervisors and HR staff may benefit by having competent supervisors who do not generate employee complaints and intentions to quit.

Examining the Effects of Performance Feedback on Preschool Teachers’ Fidelity of Implementation of a Small-Group Phonological Awareness Intervention

ABSTRACTAlthough a growing body of literature indicates that high-quality preschool and/or prekindergarten programs can improve child outcomes, research evidence suggests that some children may continue to exhibit academic difficulties. While there appears to be overwhelming evidence supporting the effectiveness of performance feedback for improving teaching practices in kindergarten to Grade 12 settings, research is needed on its effectiveness with preschool teachers to address early literacy concerns. Thus, for this study, we used a concurrent multiple baseline across-group design to examine the effectiveness of performance feedback on teachers’ implementation of a targeted small-group phonological awareness intervention. We also examined the impact of targeted small-group instruction on students’ phonological awareness skills. Findings suggested that preschool teachers were satisfied with the performance feedback process and found the phonological awareness intervention to be acceptable and socially valid. The discussion includes implications for future research and practice.

Process Performance Feedback and Quality Goal Setting as Sources of Process Restrictiveness and Behavior Guidance in Electronic Brainstorming

Process Performance Feedback and Quality Goal Setting as Sources of Process Restrictiveness and Behavior Guidance in Electronic Brainstorming

The Effect of Performance Feedback on the Exploration and Exploitation Tradeoff

March (1991) concluded that when organizations seek to balance exploration and exploitation, the choice is primarily driven by learning from performance feedback. This research tests this conclusion of March at the aggregate organizational level. We examine the impact of the performance feedback using textual analysis of quarterly earnings releases. Unexpectedly, we find that better performance is related to a subsequent increase in exploration relative to exploitation. Since prospect theory is based on individual risk-taking, our findings suggest different mechanisms of risk-taking as a response to performance feedback at the aggregate, organizational level. Our research highlights the performance feedback process at the aggregate organizational level as a determinant of the tradeoff between exploration and exploitation.

Altered activation of the ventral striatum under performance-related observation in social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by fear of social and performance situations. The consequence of scrutiny by others for the neural processing of performance feedback in SAD is unknown. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activation to positive, negative, and uninformative performance feedback in patients diagnosed with SAD and age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy control subjects who performed a time estimation task during a social observation condition and a non-social control condition: while either being monitored or unmonitored by a body camera, subjects received performance feedback after performing a time estimation that they could not fully evaluate without external feedback. We found that brain activation in ventral striatum (VS) and midcingulate cortex was modulated by an interaction of social context and feedback type. SAD patients showed a lack of social-context-dependent variation of feedback processing, while control participants showed an enhancement of brain responses specifically to positive feedback in VS during observation. The present findings emphasize the importance of social-context processing in SAD by showing that scrutiny prevents appropriate reward-processing-related signatures in response to positive performances in SAD.

Perceived control increases the reward positivity and stimulus preceding negativity.

The reward positivity (RewP) and the stimulus preceding negativity (SPN), two ERPs associated with reward delivery and reward anticipation, are modulated by motivational intensity. Motivational intensity is the effort organisms would make to exert behaviors, and it varies with the difficulty of exerting that behavior. If a task is perceived as impossible, which means that one does not have control over own outcomes, motivational intensity is low. In the current study, we tested the prediction that perceiving control over one's outcomes increases both the RewP to feedback and the SPN prior to feedback compared to perceiving no control. We also examined whether P300 and LPP amplitudes to reward and nonreward images were similarly modulated. Twenty-five female participants completed a gambling task in which correct choices were followed by pictures of attractive men and incorrect choices were followed by pictures of rocks. To manipulate perceived control, participants were told that, in one block of trials, they could learn a mouse-click rule in order to see only pictures of men (high perceived control condition), while in the other block, the pictures would appear randomly (low perceived control condition). However, in both conditions, feedback appeared randomly. Although the RewP was elicited in both blocks, the RewP and SPN were higher in the high perceived control condition (i.e., when participants thought that they could influence their outcomes). Perceived control did not modulate the P300 and LPP to pictures. The results suggest that approach motivation and its intensity modulate the processing of performance feedback.

Working Toward a Competency-Based Preceptor Development Program.

Preceptorship programs are widely used in nursing education and transition to practice. This article describes a variety of improvements implemented in an academic health sciences center on the basis of findings from a study previously conducted with preceptors in the same institution. A long-standing preceptor preparation program was redesigned and expanded into two levels-an introductory workshop directed toward meeting the needs of new preceptors, and an advanced workshop for experienced preceptors. Organization-specific preceptor competencies were developed as a foundation for preceptor practice. The competencies also informed the revised preceptor development program that included selection, ongoing development, and evaluation. A more structured support system, a standardized performance feedback process, and additional recognition strategies were incorporated in the new competency-based preceptor program. J Contin Educ Nurs. 2016;47(9):427-432.

Patterns and reliability of EEG during error monitoring for internal versus external feedback in schizophrenia

BackgroundAccurately monitoring one's performance on daily life tasks, and integrating internal and external performance feedback are necessary for guiding productive behavior. Although internal feedback processing, as indexed by the error-related negativity (ERN), is consistently impaired in schizophrenia, initial findings suggest that external performance feedback processing, as indexed by the feedback negativity (FN), may actually be intact. The current study evaluated internal and external feedback processing task performance and test-retest reliability in schizophrenia. Methods92 schizophrenia outpatients and 63 healthy controls completed a flanker task (ERN) and a time estimation task (FN). Analyses examined the ΔERN and ΔFN defined as difference waves between correct/positive versus error/negative feedback conditions. A temporal principal component analysis was conducted to distinguish the ΔERN and ΔFN from overlapping neural responses. We also assessed test-retest reliability of ΔERN and ΔFN in patients over a 4-week interval. ResultsPatients showed reduced ΔERN accompanied by intact ΔFN. In patients, test-retest reliability for both ΔERN and ΔFN over a four-week period was fair to good. ConclusionIndividuals with schizophrenia show a pattern of impaired internal, but intact external, feedback processing. This pattern has implications for understanding the nature and neural correlates of impaired feedback processing in schizophrenia.

Performance Feedback Processing Is Positively Biased As Predicted by Attribution Theory.

A considerable literature on attribution theory has shown that healthy individuals exhibit a positivity bias when inferring the causes of evaluative feedback on their performance. They tend to attribute positive feedback internally (e.g., to their own abilities) but negative feedback externally (e.g., to environmental factors). However, all empirical demonstrations of this bias suffer from at least one of the three following drawbacks: First, participants directly judge explicit causes for their performance. Second, participants have to imagine events instead of experiencing them. Third, participants assess their performance only after receiving feedback and thus differences in baseline assessments cannot be excluded. It is therefore unclear whether the classically reported positivity bias generalizes to setups without these drawbacks. Here, we aimed at establishing the relevance of attributions for decision-making by showing an attribution-related positivity bias in a decision-making task. We developed a novel task, which allowed us to test how participants changed their evaluations in response to positive and negative feedback about performance. Specifically, we used videos of actors expressing different facial emotional expressions. Participants were first asked to evaluate the actors’ credibility in expressing a particular emotion. After this initial rating, participants performed an emotion recognition task and did—or did not—receive feedback on their veridical performance. Finally, participants re-rated the actors’ credibility, which provided a measure of how they changed their evaluations after feedback. Attribution theory predicts that participants change their evaluations of the actors’ credibility toward the positive after receiving positive performance feedback and toward the negative after negative performance feedback. Our results were in line with this prediction. A control condition without feedback showed that correct or incorrect performance alone could not explain the observed positivity bias. Furthermore, participants’ behavior in our task was linked to the most widely used measure of attribution style. In sum, our findings suggest that positive and negative performance feedback influences the evaluation of task-related stimuli, as predicted by attribution theory. Therefore, our study points to the relevance of attribution theory for feedback processing in decision-making and provides a novel outlook for decision-making biases.

Electrocortical Evidence of Enhanced Performance Monitoring in Social Anxiety

Self-focused attention is thought to be a key feature of social anxiety disorder. Yet few studies have used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine whether socially anxious individuals display greater monitoring of their performance and attention to their errors. Similarly, only a few studies have used ERPs to examine how social anxiety is related to processing of performance feedback. Individuals with high (n=26) and low (n=28) levels of social anxiety completed a trial-and-error learning task. Self-focus was manipulated using false heart-rate feedback during a random subset of trials. Performance feedback was given using emotional and neutral faces in a positive context (correct=happy face; incorrect=neutral face) and negative context (correct=neutral face; incorrect=disgust face) in order to investigate biased interpretation and attention to feedback. Socially anxious subjects displayed enhanced amplitude of the ERN and CRN, suggesting greater response monitoring, and enhanced Pe amplitude, suggesting greater processing of errors relative to the low social anxiety group. No group differences were observed with respect to feedback processing. Before learning stimulus–response mappings in the negative context, the FRN was larger for self-focus compared to standard trials and marginally larger for socially anxious subjects compared to controls. These findings support cognitive models and suggest avenues for future research.

The impact of stress on feedback and error processing during behavioral adaptation

Stress is known to influence learning in a complex fashion. The present study aimed to examine, in how far feedback-based behavioral adaptation and electrophysiological correlates of error and feedback processing during this process are altered after acute stress. To this end, a learning task involving conditions with contingent and non-contingent monetary feedback was applied to 40 healthy young men (two groups of 20 each). The participants of one group were stressed using the socially evaluated cold pressor test. A second group of participants underwent a control procedure before the task was administered and brain activity was assessed by means of electroencephalography. The analysis focused on the feedback-related negativity (FRN) and the error-related negativity (ERN). Stressed participants did not differ from controls in learning performance. They showed, however, an elevated FRN amplitude difference between punishment and reward compared to controls. Moreover, stressed but not control participants' FRN amplitudes reflected feedback contingency after learning and thus an outcome prediction error. For response-locked potentials, no significant group differences were found. These results indicate that stress leads to a stronger recruitment of the so-called reward system in the processing of performance feedback during feedback-based behavioral adaptation.

Impulsivity and the association between the feedback-related negativity and performance on an inhibitory control task in young at-risk children.

Identifying neurocognitive processes associated with effective inhibitory control is particularly relevant for individuals at high risk for disruptive behaviors, such as maltreated children. Performance feedback processing during a flanker task was investigated in maltreated preschool-aged children (N = 67) via an event-related potential component, the feedback-related negativity (FRN). The functionality of the FRN in children with high impulsivity was of interest, as impulsivity was associated with an exaggerated FRN in previous research. Results showed that high impulsivity was associated with an exaggerated FRN and greater post-error slowing. For children with high impulsivity, there was a correlation between the FRN and accuracy, which was not found in children with low impulsivity. This suggests that an exaggerated FRN is particularly important for children with high impulsivity to maintain effective inhibitory control.