Context Specificity of Post-Error and Post-Conflict Cognitive Control Adjustments

Abstract

There has been accumulating evidence that cognitive control can be adaptively regulated by monitoring for processing conflict as an index of online control demands. However, it is not yet known whether top-down control mechanisms respond to processing conflict in a manner specific to the operative task context or confer a more generalized benefit. While previous studies have examined the taskset-specificity of conflict adaptation effects, yielding inconsistent results, control-related performance adjustments following errors have been largely overlooked. This gap in the literature underscores recent debate as to whether post-error performance represents a strategic, control-mediated mechanism or a nonstrategic consequence of attentional orienting. In the present study, evidence of generalized control following both high conflict correct trials and errors was explored in a task-switching paradigm. Conflict adaptation effects were not found to generalize across tasksets, despite a shared response set. In contrast, post-error slowing effects were found to extend to the inactive taskset and were predictive of enhanced post-error accuracy. In addition, post-error performance adjustments were found to persist for several trials and across multiple task switches, a finding inconsistent with attentional orienting accounts of post-error slowing. These findings indicate that error-related control adjustments confer a generalized performance benefit and suggest dissociable mechanisms of post-conflict and post-error control.

An adaptive orienting theory of error processing

“…For example, while several studies using the flanker task have found increases in accuracy following errors compared to correct trials (Grutzmann, Endrass, Klawohn, & Kathmann, ; Marco‐Pallares, Camara, Munte, & Rodriguez‐Fornells, ; Pontifex et al, ; Seifert, von Cramon, Imperati, Tittgemeyer, & Ullsperger, ; Strozyk & Jentzsch, ), other studies using the same paradigm have shown either the opposite pattern (Arnstein, Lakey, Compton, & Kleinow, ; Fiehler, Ullsperger, & von Cramon, ; Franken, van Strien, Franzek, & van de Wetering, ) or no difference between the conditions (Moran, Bernat, Aviyente, Schroder, & Moser, ; van den Brink et al, ). The same picture is true for other tasks, with some studies showing post‐error increases in accuracy (Danielmeier et al, ; Dutilh et al, ; Forster & Cho, ; Klein et al, ), some showing decreases (Bombeke, Schouppe, Duthoo, & Notebaert, ; Carp & Compton, ; Houtman & Notebaert, ; Jentzsch & Dudschig, ; Jonker, Seli, Cheyne, & Smilek, ; Notebaert et al, ; Notebaert & Verguts, ; Van der Borght, Braem, Stevens, & Notebaert, ), and some showing no change (e.g., Hajcak et al, ).…”

Monitoring and control in multitasking

“…5). This pattern not only shows that adaptive and nonadaptive posterror adjustments coexist and can be elicited by the same error, it also indicates that adaptive posterror adjustments under multitasking are subtask-specific (see also Forster & Cho, 2014). This implies that the underlying error-monitoring system is able to validly assign an error signal (e.g., postresponse conflict) to the task that caused the error.…”

Separate and joint effects of alcohol and caffeine on conflict monitoring and adaptation

“…Though related, post-error and post-conflict control adjustments are not identical phenomena (see Forster & Cho, 2014). Recent research shows that alcohol strongly affects post-error adjustments but has little impact on sequences of correct-response trials in conflict tasks (Bailey et al, 2014).…”