Different event-related potentials (ERPs) have been shown to correlate with learning from feedback in decisionmaking tasks and with learning in explicit memory tasks. In the present study, we investigated which ERPs predict learning from corrective feedback in a multiple-choice test, which combines elements from both paradigms. Participants worked through sets of multiple-choice items of a Swahili-German vocabulary task. Whereas the initial presentation of an item required the participants to guess the answer, corrective feedback could be used to learn the correct response. Initial analyses revealed that corrective feedback elicited components related to reinforcement learning (FRN), as well as to explicit memory processing (P300) and attention (early frontal positivity). However, only the P300 and early frontal positivity were positively correlated with successful learning from corrective feedback, whereas the FRN was even larger when learning failed. These results suggest that learning from corrective feedback crucially relies on explicit memory processing and attentional orienting to corrective feedback, rather than on reinforcement learning.
Posterror slowing (PES) refers to an increased response time following errors. While PES has traditionally been attributed to control adjustments, recent evidence suggested that PES reflects interference. The present study investigated the hypothesis that control and interference represent 2 components of PES that differ with respect to their time course and task-specificity. To this end, we investigated PES in a dual-task paradigm in which participants had to classify colors and tones that were separated by a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Errors in the color task caused PES both in the tone task of the same trial and the color task of the subsequent trial. However, while the former effect disappeared with an increasing SOA, the latter effect was independent of SOA and lasted for several trials. This suggests that errors simultaneously induce task-unspecific, transient PES reflecting interference and task-specific, more long-lasting PES reflecting control adjustments. (PsycINFO Database Record
Adaptive decision making relies on learning from feedback. Because feedback sometimes can be misleading, optimal learning requires that knowledge about the feedback's reliability be utilized to adjust feedback processing. Although previous research has shown that feedback reliability indeed influences feedback processing, the underlying mechanisms through which this is accomplished remain unclear. Here we propose that feedback processing is adjusted by the adaptive, top-down valuation of feedback. We assume that unreliable feedback is devalued relative to reliable feedback, thus reducing the reward prediction errors that underlie feedback-related brain activity and learning. A crucial prediction of this account is that the effects of feedback reliability are susceptible to contrast effects. That is, the effects of feedback reliability should be enhanced when both reliable and unreliable feedback are experienced within the same context, as compared to when only one level of feedback reliability is experienced. To evaluate this prediction, we measured the event-related potentials elicited by feedback in two experiments in which feedback reliability was varied either within or between blocks. We found that the fronto-central valence effect, a correlate of reward prediction errors during reinforcement learning, was reduced for unreliable feedback. But this result was obtained only when feedback reliability was varied within blocks, thus indicating a contrast effect. This suggests that the adaptive valuation of feedback is one mechanism underlying the effects of feedback reliability on feedback processing.
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