Error monitoring is related to processing internal affective states

Abstract

Detecting behavioral errors is critical for optimizing performance. Here, we tested whether error monitoring is enhanced in emotional task contexts, and whether this enhancement depends on processing internal affective states. Event-related potentials were recorded in individuals with low and high levels of alexithymia-that is, individuals with difficulties identifying and describing their feelings. We administered a face word Stroop paradigm (Egner, Etkin, Gale, & Hirsch, 2008) in which the task was to classify emotional faces either with respect to their expression (happy or fearful; emotional task set) or with respect to their gender (female or male; neutral task set). The error-related negativity, a marker of rapid error monitoring, was enhanced in individuals with low alexithymia when they adopted the emotional task set. By contrast, individuals with high alexithymia did not show such an enhancement. Moreover, in the high-alexithymia group, the difference in the error-related negativities between the emotional and neutral task sets correlated negatively with difficulties identifying their own feelings, as measured by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale. These results show that errormonitoring activity is stronger in emotional task contexts and that this enhancement depends on processing internal affective states.

Common mechanisms in error monitoring and action effect monitoring

“…The authors argued that this modulation of the Ne/ ERN might originate in affect-driven changes to dopamine levels in the MFC, possibly in conjunction with an activation of the noradrenergic system due to increased arousal. Furthermore, spatial incompatibility entails response conflict (Simon, 1990) and recent evidence suggests that conflict and errors triggers negative affect (Aarts, De Houwer, & Pourtois, 2012Dreisbach & Fischer, 2012;Maier, Scarpazza, Starita, Filogamo, & Làdavas, 2016;Schouppe et al, 2015;. As a result, conflict elicited by unexpected action effects in our prime task could have generated negative affect, which in turn could have increased the sensitivity of detecting negatively valent errors in the probe task.…”

Temporal dynamics of error-related corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major activity: Evidence for implicit emotion regulation following errors

“…Theoretically, this is of interest since recent research suggested that conflict and errortriggered affect is not only epiphenomenal, but has a functional role as a driving force for control adjustments (Inzlicht et al, 2015;van Steenbergen, Band, & Hommel, 2009;van Steenbergen, 2015;Dignath et al, in press). This speculation is supported by studies showing that errors (and conflict between responses more generally) lead to negative affective evaluations (Aarts, De Houwer, & Pourtois, 2012;Maier, Scarpazza, Starita, Filogamo, & Làdavas, 2016), trigger avoidance motivation Hochman et al, 2017) and are accompanied by physiological changes which are typical for negative, high arousing affect (Hajcak, McDonald & Simons, 2003;Spruit, Wilderjans, & van Steenbergen, 2018;Hajcak & Foti, 2008).…”

The emotive nature of conflict monitoring in the medial prefrontal cortex

“…Alexithymia reflects individual differences in the ability to detect and describe self-generated emotion (Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1999). Recent investigations suggest that increasing alexithymia predicts reduced neural conflict monitoring (i.e., reduced ERN amplitudes; Maier, Scarpazza, Starita, Filogamo, & Làdavas, 2016) and poorer behavioural regulation of conflict (de Gallan, Sellaro, Colzato, & Hommel, 2014). While these results should be confirmed in larger samples, they support the The Emotive Nature of Conflict 21 idea that conflict-driven control relies partially on sensitivity to internally generated affective states.…”