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.

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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

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