Effects of time pressure on verbal self-monitoring: An ERP study

Abstract

The Error-Related Negativity (ERN) is a component of the event-related brain potential (ERP) that is associated with action monitoring and error detection. The present study addressed the question whether or not an ERN occurs after verbal error detection, e.g., during phoneme monitoring. We obtained an ERN following verbal errors which showed a typical decrease in amplitude under severe time pressure. This result demonstrates that the functioning of the verbal self-monitoring system is comparable to other performance monitoring, such as action monitoring. Furthermore, we found that participants made more errors in phoneme monitoring under time pressure than in a control condition. This may suggest that time pressure decreases the amount of resources available to a capacity-limited self-monitor thereby leading to more errors. IntroductionError monitoring is an important executive function, which helps to adapt, anticipate, learn, correct, and mend the consequences of actions. The neural basis of error monitoring has become a key issue in cognitive neuroscience due to its importance to the aforementioned cognitive skills. A better understanding of its working may offer new insights into the dysfunctions of self-monitoring seen in a range of clinical conditions such as schizophrenia , opiate addicts (Forman et al., 2004), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Gehring et al., 2000). Progress in identifying the functional characteristics of the error monitoring system has been mainly achieved through the study of an electrophysiological index thought to be associated with error processing, i.e., Error-Related Negativity (ERN; Falkenstein et al., 1991;Gehring et al., 1993). The ERN is a component of the event-related potential (ERP) that has a fronto-central scalp distribution and peaks about 80 ms after an overt incorrect response (Bernstein et al., 1995;Holroyd and Yeung, 2003;Scheffers et al., 1996). The early onset latency of the ERN with respect to the incorrect response is suggestive of an error monitoring system. The generation of the ERN has been localized in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC; Dehaene et al., 1994;Holroyd and Coles, 2002). Several hypotheses of performance monitoring have been proposed to account for the ERN, for instance, the mismatch hypothesis put forward by Falkenstein et al. (1991), the response conflict hypothesis proposed by Carter et al. (1998), and the reinforcement learning theory by Holroyd and Coles (2002).The mismatch hypothesis considers the ERN as the result of a mismatch between the intended and the actual response execution (Bernstein et al., 1995). This hypothesis assumes a comparison between the internal representation of the intended correct response, arising from ongoing stimulus processing, and the internal representation of the actual

Semantic Context and Visual Feature Effects in Object Naming: An fMRI Study using Arterial Spin Labeling

“…Only a small number of studies have specifically investigated verbal self-monitoring using functional imaging. These studies have used either EEG/MEG (Ganushchak & Schiller, 2006Maess et al, 2002) to investigate the time course and/or signal amplitude associated with verbal self-monitoring, or fMRI and PET through the use of distorted, masked, or delayed verbal feedback (Christoffels, Formisano, & Schiller, 2007;Fu et al, 2006;Hashimoto & Sakai, 2003;McGuire et al, 1996). Several EEG and MEG studies have pointed to a role for the left temporal cortex in self-monitoring, however, they cannot provide specificity in terms of anatomical regions.…”

Motivation and semantic context affect brain error-monitoring activity: An event-related brain potentials study

“…However, these authors do not make an explicit link between the negativity they found in their study and the ERN. Ganushchak and Schiller (2006) used a phoneme-monitoring task to investigate the effects of verbal monitoring under time pressure. Participants were presented with pictures and had to indicate whether the target phoneme was present in the name of the picture.…”

Brain Error–monitoring Activity is Affected by Semantic Relatedness: An Event-related Brain Potentials Study

“…Previous studies showed that an ERN can be elicited by verbal errors (e.g., Ganushchak & Schiller, 2006;Sebastián-Gallés, Rodríguez-Fornells, De Diego-Balaquer, & Díaz, 2006;Masaki, Tanaka, Takasawa, & Yamazaki, 2001). For instance, Masaki et al (2001) examined whether the ERN occurs in relation to speech errors in the Stroop color-word task.…”

“…Therefore, these authors concluded that ERN-like components can also be found after vocal slips. Ganushchak and Schiller (2006) used a phoneme monitoring task to address the question whether an ERN occurs after verbal error detection and whether a potential ERN is affected by a time pressure manipulation. These authors obtained an ERN following verbal errors.…”