Foreshadowing of performance accuracy by event-related potentials: evidence from a minimal-conflict task.

Foreshadowing of performance accuracy by event-related potentials: evidence from a minimal-conflict task.

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BACKGROUND: Recent studies employing stimulus-response compatibility tasks suggest that an increase in the amplitude of the positive deflection of the response-locked event-related potential (ERP) foreshadows errors on forthcoming trials.However, no studies have tested the generalizability of error-foreshadowing positivity to tasks without stimulus-response interference.METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL puzzle FINDINGS: The present study adopted an alternating-response task, in which the participants responded to the pointing direction of an arrowhead (up or down).

Although the arrowhead direction alternated for the majority of trials (95%), occasionally this pattern was broken by a repeated stimulus, termed a lure trial.We compared the matched-reaction-time correct-preceding ERP with the error-preceding ERP on lure-preceding trials.There was no evidence that errors are foreshadowed by the increase of a positive electroencephalogram (EEG) deflection.

To the contrary, analyses of ERPs time-locked to electromyogram (EMG) onset on the five consecutive lure-preceding trials showed larger positive deflections on correct-preceding than error-preceding trials.The post-response negativity did not differ between correct-preceding and error-preceding trials.CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results suggest that in minimal conflict tasks a decreased positivity may foreshadow incorrect performance ALMOND VANILLA UNSWEETEND several trials prior to the error, possibly reflecting the waning of task-related efforts.

Therefore, error-foreshadowing brain signals may be task-specific.