title: The subjective experience of committed errors and the Discrepancy-Attribution hypothesis.
abstract: In routine sequential behavior, we sometimes become aware of having committed an error. However, often we do not. Here, we investigated the processes underlying conscious error detection within a typing paradigm. Our assumption according to the Discrepancy-Attribution hypothesis is that the (explicit) judgment of having made an error is due to a perceived discrepancy between expected and actually experienced performance which then is attributed to an error. In 4 experiments, participants were instructed to type single words without seeing what they were typing and, afterwards, to judge whether typing was correct. Experiments 1 through 3 tested the assumption that conscious awareness about an error is due to a perceived discrepancy between an expectation and the experienced performance. Experiment 4 investigated the assumption of a separate attribution process triggered by the perceived discrepancy. The results support the Discrepancy-Attribution hypothesis and argue for a two-stage model of conscious error detection.
authors.affiliation: University of Cologne, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Psychology, Köln, Germany. jwilbert@uni-koeln.de
authors.forename: Jürgen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wilbert
authors.forename: Hilde
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Haider
mesh_terms: D001364:Awareness; D001519:Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D055815:Young Adult