Cognitive and physiological determinants of error awareness

当在快速选择任务中出现错误时，这些错误可以在几分之一秒内以高可靠性报告。这种所谓的错误意识可能依赖于证据积累过程，其中错误的证据来自多个来源。错误积极性是一种事件相关电位（ERP），在错误发生后200至500 ms之间达到峰值，已被确定为累积证据的神经相关性，因为它预测参与者是否以及如何自信地意识到错误。然而，很少有人知道哪些认知和生理机制为这一过程提供了证据，从而确定是否明确检测到错误。早期的观点认为，错误负性（错误处理的早期ERP相关）反映了提供这一证据的大脑信号。然而，相关的方法并没有揭示一个强大的关系之间的错误负性和错误意识，离开它的作用错误意识不清楚。在本研究中，我们使用一种新的目标掩蔽范式来揭示错误负性以及其他认知和生理变量对错误意识的贡献。有了这个范例，我们能够引出错误，错误的积极性，但没有错误的消极性可以观察到。在该项目的第一部分，我们利用这种范式来调查错误负性是否是参与者以高置信度意识到错误的必要前提，（2）对于引发心率减慢和瞳孔放大的错误，即已经讨论过的参与错误意识的自主反应，以及（3）对于所谓的早期错误感觉的发生，其指的是在错误发生之前已经检测到错误的感觉。在第二部分中，我们使用目标掩蔽范式来探索任务中嵌入的元认知线索可以影响错误意识。在这里，我们调查的作用，知识的错误可能性，以及刺激的背景和行动的影响，是预测错误的发生。该项目的结果将有助于理解人类大脑中错误处理的认知和神经结构。

When errors occur in speeded choice tasks, these errors can be reported with a high reliability and within the fraction of a second. This so-called error awareness presumably relies on an evidence accumulation process, in which evidence for an error is sampled from multiple sources. The error positivity, an event-related potential (ERP) peaking between 200 and 500 ms after errors, has been identified as a neural correlate of the accumulated evidence, as it predicts whether and how confidently participants become aware of an error. However, little is known which cognitive and physiological mechanisms provide the evidence for this process, and thus determine whether or not an error is explicitly detected. Early ideas assume that the error negativity, an early ERP correlate of error processing, reflects a brain signal that provides this evidence. However, correlative approaches did not reveal a robust relationship between the error negativity and error awareness, leaving its role for error awareness unclear. In the present project, we use a novel target-masking paradigm to uncover the contribution of the error negativity and other cognitive and physiological variables to error awareness. With this paradigm, we are able to elicit errors for which an error positivity but no error negativity can be observed. In a first part of the project, we utilize this paradigm to investigate whether an error negativity is a necessary precondition (1) for participants becoming aware of an error with high confidence, (2) for errors eliciting heart rate deceleration and pupil dilation, that is, autonomous reactions that have been discussed as being involved in error awareness, and (3) for the occurrence of a so-called early error sensation, which refers to the feeling of having detected an error already before its occurrence. In a second part, we use the target-masking paradigm to explore which metacognitive cues embedded in the task can influence error awareness. Here, we investigate the role of knowledge about error likelihood as well as stimulus contexts and action effects that are predictive of error occurrence. The results of this project will contribute to an understanding of the cognitive and neural architecture of error processing in the human brain.