title: The Pupillary Orienting Response Predicts Adaptive Behavioral Adjustment after Errors.
abstract: Reaction time (RT) is commonly observed to slow down after an error. This post-error slowing (PES) has been thought to arise from the strategic adoption of a more cautious response mode following deployment of cognitive control. Recently, an alternative account has suggested that PES results from interference due to an error-evoked orienting response. We investigated whether error-related orienting may in fact be a pre-cursor to adaptive post-error behavioral adjustment when the orienting response resolves before subsequent trial onset. We measured pupil dilation, a prototypical measure of autonomic orienting, during performance of a choice RT task with long inter-stimulus intervals, and found that the trial-by-trial magnitude of the error-evoked pupil response positively predicted both PES magnitude and the likelihood that the following response would be correct. These combined findings suggest that the magnitude of the error-related orienting response predicts an adaptive change of response strategy following errors, and thereby promote a reconciliation of the orienting and adaptive control accounts of PES.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Peter R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.|Department of Educational Science, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marianne L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: van Moort
authors.affiliation: Institute of Psychology and Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Sander
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nieuwenhuis
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011680:Pupil / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time; D055815:Young Adult