Abstract
Abstract: Stop-signal tasks can be used to analyze mechanisms of action control and error monitoring. Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies indicated enhanced stop-signal N2 amplitudes for unsuccessful compared with successful inhibition. The aim of this study was to further investigate whether stop-signal related and response-related ERP components would reflect different aspects of error processing. ERPs were recorded during a saccade countermanding task, i.e. a stop-signal task with oculomotor response. Error awareness was obtained from subjective accuracy ratings. The response-related error positivity (Pe) was more pronounced for perceived than for unperceived errors whereas awareness of an error did not modulate the magnitude of the error negativity (Ne). This result is in accordance with previous findings. Stop-signal related ERPs revealed enhanced N2 amplitudes for incorrect (unsuccessfully stopped) trials compared with correct trials. However, this enhancement was restricted to perceived errors. The results support the idea that the stop-signal itself provides a performance feedback and the N2 reflects aspects of conscious response monitoring of unsuccessful inhibition.
References
1994). A multiple source approach to the correction of eye artifacts. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 90, 229– 241
(1998). Anterior cingulate cortex, error detection, and the online monitoring of performance. Science, 280, 747– 749
(2004). The N2 in go/no-go tasks reflects conflict monitoring not response inhibition. Brain and Cognition, 56, 165– 176
(1991). Effects of crossmodal divided attention on late ERP components. II. Error processing in choice reaction tasks. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 78, 447– 455
(2000). ERP components on reaction errors and their functional significance: A tutorial. Biological Psychology, 51, 87– 107
(1999). ERP components in Go/NoGo tasks and their relation to inhibition. Acta Psychologica, 101, 267– 291
(1993). A neural system for error detection and compensation. Psychological Science, 4, 385– 390
(1998). Role of frontal eye fields in countermanding saccades: Visual, movement, and fixation activity. Journal of Neurophysiology, 79, 817– 834
(2002). The neural basis of human error processing: Reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity. Psychological Review, 109, 679– 709
(2003). Performance monitoring by the anterior cingulate cortex during saccade countermanding. Science, 302, 120– 122
(2004). ERP components associated with successful and unsuccessful stopping in a stop-signal paradigm. Psychophysiology, 42, 9– 20
(1984). On the ability to inhibit simple and choice reaction time responses: A model and a method. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Human Perception and Performance, 10, 276– 291
(2001). Error-related brain potentials are differentially related to awareness of response errors: Evidence from an antisaccade task. Psychophysiology, 38, 752– 760
(2003). Electrophysiological correlates of anterior cingulate function in a go/no-go task: Effects of response conflict and trial type frequency. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, 17– 26
(2003). Controlled movement processing: Superior colliculus activity associated with countermanded saccades. Journal of Neuroscience, 23, 6480– 6489
(2005). The prefrontal substrate of reflexive saccade inhibition in humans. Biological Psychiatry, 57, 1159– 1165
(2004). Effects of stop-signal probability in the stop-signal paradigm: The N2/P3 complex further validated. Brain and Cognition, 56, 234– 252
(