Schedule of Events | Symposia

Dissociating early and late error monitoring with the target-masking paradigm

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Marco Steinhauser¹ (marco.steinhauser@ku.de), Julia Dumsky¹, Martin E. Maier¹, Francesco Di Gregorio²; ¹Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, ²University of Bologna

Errors in choice tasks elicit a cascade of event-related potentials, the error-related negativity (Ne/ERN) and the error positivity (Pe). While the early Ne/ERN is a fast error signal indicating response conflict or prediction error, the later Pe has been related to error awareness. Traditional views assumed that these components reflect two stages of a unitary monitoring system with the Ne/ERN delivering the input to the later Pe. To test this assumption, we have recently developed the target-masking paradigm, which allows for observing errors that are detectable without knowing the correct response. These errors lead to a Pe but no Ne/ERN, which demonstrates that the two components reflect two independent systems of error monitoring. Here, we report two novel studies using this paradigm. In Study 1, we demonstrate that also error awareness is possible without an Ne/ERN. In Study 2, we show that autonomic responses to errors such as error-related heart rate deceleration and pupil dilation are differentially linked to the Ne/ERN and Pe. These findings show that human error monitoring relies on two dissociable systems with different functional significance.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Monitoring & inhibitory control