title: Posterror speeding after threat-detection failure.
abstract: Cognitive control enables individuals to rapidly adapt to changing task demands. To investigate error-driven adjustments in cognitive control, we considered performance changes in posterror trials, when participants performed a visual search task requiring detection of angry, happy, or neutral facial expressions in crowds of faces. We hypothesized that the failure to detect a potential threat (angry face) would prompt a different posterror adjustment than the failure to detect a nonthreatening target (happy or neutral face). Indeed, in 3 sets of experiments, we found evidence of posterror speeding, in the first case, and of posterror slowing, in the second case. Previous results indicate that a threatening stimulus can improve the efficiency of visual search. The results of the present study show that a similar effect can also be observed when participants fail to detect a threat. The impact of threat-detection failure on cognitive control, as revealed by the present study, suggests that posterror adjustments should be understood as the product of domain-specific mechanisms that are strongly influenced by affective information, rather than as the effect of a general-purpose error-monitoring system.
authors: Department of Neurosciences, Psychology, Drug Research, Università degli Studi di Firenze.
authors: Corrado
authors: C
authors: Caudek
authors: Department of Neurosciences, Psychology, Drug Research, Università degli Studi di Firenze.
authors: Francesco
authors: F
authors: Ceccarini
authors: Department of Health Sciences, Università degli Studi di Firenze.
authors: Claudio
authors: C
authors: Sica
mesh_terms: D000066498:Emotional Adjustment; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010467:Perceptual Defense; D011930:Reaction Time