The relationship between aerobic fitness and executive control was assessed in 38 higher-and lower-fit children (M age ϭ 9.4 years), grouped according to their performance on a field test of aerobic capacity. Participants performed a flanker task requiring variable amounts of executive control while event-related brain potential responses and task performance were assessed. Results indicated that higher-fit children performed more accurately across conditions of the flanker task and following commission errors when compared to lower-fit children, whereas no group differences were observed for reaction time. Neuroelectric data indicated that P3 amplitude was larger for higher-compared to lower-fit children across conditions of the flanker task, and higher-fit children exhibited reduced error-related negativity amplitude and increased error positivity amplitude compared to lower-fit children. The data suggest that fitness is associated with better cognitive performance on an executive control task through increased cognitive control, resulting in greater allocation of attentional resources during stimulus encoding and a subsequent reduction in conflict during response selection. The findings differ from those observed in adult populations by indicating a general rather than a selective relationship between aerobic fitness and cognition.

The minimum number of trials necessary to accurately characterize the error-related negativity (ERN) and the error positivity (Pe) across the life span was investigated using samples of preadolescent children, college-age young adults, and older adults. Event-related potentials and task performance were subsequently measured during a modified flanker task. Response-locked averages were created using sequentially increasing errors of commission in blocks of two. Findings indicated that across all age cohorts ERN and Pe were not significantly different relative to the withinparticipants grand average after six trials. Further, results indicated that the ERN and Pe exhibited excellent internal reliability in preadolescent children and young adults after six trials, but older adults required eight trials to reach similar reliability. These data indicate that the ERN and Pe may be accurately quantified with as few as six to eight commission error trials across the life span. Descriptors: Cognition, Children, Normal Volunteers, Aged, EEG/ERPWith a growing number of investigations assessing neuroelectric concomitants of error-related brain activity, it is increasingly necessary to quantify the number of trials needed to obtain stable and reliable event-related potential (ERP) components. During the past decade the minimum number of trials necessary for response-locked ERP components has been fiercely debated, with averages ranging from 5 to 300 trials (Olvet & Hajcak, 2009). Recently, Olvet and Hajcak have elucidated this issue by systematically assessing the stability of the error-related responselocked ERP components in young adults, indicating that stability occurs following six to eight error trials. Still unanswered, however, is the extent to which these findings generalize across the life span. That is, given the high level of intraindividual variability present during development and aging (Hultsch & MacDonald,

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To improve behavior, one must detect errors and initiate subsequent corrective adaptations. This action monitoring process has been widely studied, but little is known about how one may improve this aspect of cognition. To examine the relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and action monitoring, we recorded the error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related brain potential believed to index action monitoring, as well as post-error behavioral indices of action monitoring from healthy young adults (18-25 years) who varied in cardiorespiratory fitness. These measures were collected during the execution of flanker tasks emphasizing response accuracy or speed to better assess the specificity of any potential relationships between fitness and action monitoring. Higher fitness was associated with greater post-error accuracy and ERN amplitude during task conditions emphasizing accuracy, as well as greater modulation of these indices across task instruction conditions. These findings suggest that higher fitness is associated with increased cognitive flexibility, evidenced through greater change in action monitoring indices as a function of task parameters. Thus, fitness may benefit action monitoring by selectively increasing cognitive control under conditions where error detection and performance adjustments are more salient. KeywordsCognitive Control; Action Monitoring; Error-Related Negativity (ERN); Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs); Fitness During the completion of difficult cognitive tasks, an additional ongoing cognitive process is utilized to monitor performance. This process, labeled action monitoring (Gehring and Knight, 2000), is used extensively to identify instances of behavioral conflict or mistakes and direct subsequent behavior to correct these problems. Action monitoring is one example of the ability to guide thoughts and actions in a way consistent with internal intentions, termed cognitive control , and has been linked to the field of cognitive neuroscience through Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Competing Interest StatementThe authors declare no competing or conflicting interests. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript the assessment of the error-related negativity (ERN;Gehring et al., 1993; or Ne;Falkenstein et al., 1991).The ERN is a component of the response-locked event-related brain potential (ERP), typically identified as either a reinforcement learning index of error detection (Holroyd and Coles, 2002) or an early indicator of response conflict in association with ...

Social exclusion is known to cause alterations in neural activity and perceptions of social distress. However, previous research is largely limited to examining social interactions as a unitary phenomenon without investigating adjustments in neural and attentional processes that occur during social interactions. To address this limitation, we examined neural activity on a trial-by-trial basis during different social interactions. Our results show conflict monitoring neural alarm activation, indexed by the N2, in response to specific exclusionary events; even during interactions that are inclusionary overall and in the absence of self-reported feelings of social pain. Furthermore, we show enhanced attentional activation to exclusionary events, indexed by the P3b, during exclusionary, compared with inclusionary, interactions, and this P3b activation was associated with self-reported social distress following prolonged social exclusion. Finally, both the N2 and P3b showed larger amplitudes in the earlier stages of exclusion compared with later stages, suggesting heightened early sensitivity for both components. Together, these findings provide novel insights into the dynamic neural and perceptual processes of exclusion that exist during social interactions and the relationship between discrete events within interactions and the more general contexts of the social interactions.

The implicit association test (IAT) has been widely used in social cognitive research over the past decade. Controversies have arisen over what cognitive processes are being tapped into using this task. While most models use behavioral (RT) results to support their claims, little research has examined neurocognitive correlates of these behavioral measures. The present study measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of participants while completing a gay-straight IAT in order to further understand the processes involved in a typical group bias IAT. Results indicated significantly smaller N400 amplitudes and significantly larger LPP amplitudes for compatible trials than for incompatible trials, suggesting that both the semantic and emotional congruence of stimuli paired together in an IAT trial contribute to the typical RT differences found, while no differences were present for earlier ERP components including the N2. These findings are discussed with respect to early and late processing in group bias IATs.

The relationships between self-efficacy (SE), i.e., beliefs in personal capabilities, and behavioral and neuroelectric (i.e., ERN, Pe) indices of action monitoring were investigated in 40 older adults (13 male) during the completion of a flanker paradigm performed under task conditions emphasizing either accuracy or speed. SE relative to task performance during both conditions was assessed prior to each cognitive task. Results indicated that high-SE older adults exhibited larger ERN and Pe amplitudes compared to low-SE older adults under the accuracy instruction condition. Additionally, a moderating effect of SE on the relationship between ERN and post-error response accuracy was revealed in the accuracy condition, with greater ERN amplitude associated with greater post-error accuracy in the high-SE group. No significant relationships were evident between ERN and posterror accuracy in the low-SE group. Further, no significant relationships involving SE were observed in the speed condition. The findings suggest that SE may be related to neuroelectric and behavioral indices of action monitoring in older adults when task demands require greater attention to action monitoring processes.