警觉水平影响错误后行为适应

The alertness level influences post-error adjustments

错误后适应指个体在犯错后所做的以减少后续错误为目的一系列调整.错误后适应对于我们的生存和进化都有重要意义.但是,错误后适应的产生机制至今仍存在争议.本研究考查了注意网络功能与错误后适应的关系,发现注意网络的警觉功能对错误后适应有显著影响:高警觉被试较之低警觉被试能够更有效地完成错误后适应.在达成同样程度的错误后正确率提升的情况下,前者所付出的反应时代价显著低于后者.另一方面,高低警觉被试在平均反应时和平均正确率上均没有差异,说明两组被试之间错误后适应上的差异不能归结为基本反应速度的差异或者错误概率的不同.因此,错误后适应受到警觉水平的显著调节.整合当前结果与相关文献,我们提出错误后适应包括监测错误、警觉提升和认知调整3个关键加工.高警觉者在警觉提升这个环节具有优势,因此能够更为高效地完成错误后适应.

Post-error adjustment indicates that individuals execute a chain of adjustments after committing errors to reduce the likelihood of repeating an error,which is important for our survival and evolution.It includes post-error slowing（PES）,post-error improvement in accuracy（PIA）,and post-error reduction of interference（PERI） three types.However,there are still intensive disputes about the generation mechanisms of the post-error adjustment.The cognitive control account suggests that errors are associated with the error monitoring and a subsequent intensification of top-down control.After committing an error,the error signal will initiate cognitive control mechanisms to improve subsequent performance by activating the anterior cingulate cortex.In this case,increased cognitive control enables flexible recruitment of attentional resources to the goal-related dimension in the subsequent task.However,the orienting account assumes that the infrequent events can easily capture the attentional resources,and thus participants need to take more time to reorient the subsequent task.The remaining resources will be insufficient to perform effectively the subsequent task,behaving as decreased post-error accuracy.Therefore,how the attention influences the post-error adjustment remains unclear.To address the above issue,we first employed an attention network test（ANT） to evaluate the attention function of each participant.The ANT task was developed to measure the efficiency of the attentional networks including alerting,orienting and executive control through a simple cue（asterisk） and arrow Flanker task.There were four cue conditions： no cue,center cue,double cue,and spatial cue.In the no cue condition,only the fixation cross was presented in the center of the screen.In the center cue condition,an asterisk was presented in the center of the screen.In the double cue and spatial cue conditions,the fixation cross was always presented in the center of the screen.However,for the double cue condition,two asterisks were presented simultaneously at two possible target positions;for the spatial cue condition,an asterisk was presented at the target position.Additionally,the efficiency of alerting was defined as RTno cue–RTdouble cue,the efficiency of orienting was defined as RTcenter cue–RTspatial cue,and the efficiency of executive control was defined as RTincongruent–RTcongruent.Then,we employed a letter Flanker task to examine the participants’ performance in the post-error trials.PES was calculated by the RT of correct trials following errors minus the RT of correct trials following correct responses.PIA was calculated by the accuracy following errors minus the accuracy following correct response.And PERI was calculated by the interference magnitude（RTincongruent–RTcongruent） following correct responses minus the interference magnitude following errors.To investigate which function of the attentional network influences the post-error adjustment,we correlated the scores of alerting,orienting and executive control with PES,PIA,and PERI,respectively.Finally,based on the correlation result,we grouped the participants as high altering level group（32% participants） and low alerting level group（32% participants） to further examine the individual difference in the post-error adjustment.As a result,we found that only the alerting score was negatively correlated with PES and PIA.Moreover,in the individual difference analysis,we found that the PES was only observed in the low alerting level group,but this effect was absent in the high alerting level group.For the PIA,there was no significant difference between two groups.These results may suggest that the alerting function plays an important role in the post-error adjustments,especially for the PES.High alerting level group has an advantage on enhanced alertness;they accordingly complete post-error adjustment with high efficiency.