The Pupillary Orienting Response Predicts Adaptive Behavioral Adjustment after Errors

Reaction time (RT) is commonly observed to slow down after an error. This post-error slowing (PES) has been thought to arise from the strategic adoption of a more cautious response mode following deployment of cognitive control. Recently, an alternative account has suggested that PES results from in...

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Veröffentlicht in:PloS one 2016-03, Vol.11 (3), p.e0151763-e0151763
Hauptverfasser: Murphy, Peter R, van Moort, Marianne L, Nieuwenhuis, Sander
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Sprache:eng
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Zusammenfassung:Reaction time (RT) is commonly observed to slow down after an error. This post-error slowing (PES) has been thought to arise from the strategic adoption of a more cautious response mode following deployment of cognitive control. Recently, an alternative account has suggested that PES results from interference due to an error-evoked orienting response. We investigated whether error-related orienting may in fact be a pre-cursor to adaptive post-error behavioral adjustment when the orienting response resolves before subsequent trial onset. We measured pupil dilation, a prototypical measure of autonomic orienting, during performance of a choice RT task with long inter-stimulus intervals, and found that the trial-by-trial magnitude of the error-evoked pupil response positively predicted both PES magnitude and the likelihood that the following response would be correct. These combined findings suggest that the magnitude of the error-related orienting response predicts an adaptive change of response strategy following errors, and thereby promote a reconciliation of the orienting and adaptive control accounts of PES.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0151763