‹
Back
16:30 - 18:00
Parallel sessions 6
›
16:30 - 18:00
Room: HSZ - N1
Chair/s:
Maristella Lunardon
Everyone makes mistakes, and mistakes lead us to change the course of our action, either by stopping it or at least slowing it down, with an overall impact on subsequent decisions and behavior. Therefore, it is not surprising that human action control is governed by efficient cognitive mechanisms to monitor and regulate erroneous actions. But there is more to that. Errors not only trigger cognitive processes of monitoring and control. They are also associated with affective responses (often negative) that contribute to the chain of events initiated by the error. Moreover, although humans share basic functions for error processing, these functions may manifest differently across individuals, for example in relation to personality traits, and across contexts, such as in relation to task complexity and content.
The goal of this symposium is to provide a cross-cutting perspective on error processing research. By including contributions that use both behavioral and neurophysiological methods, the symposium seeks to bring together findings that shed light on various aspects of error processing.
The first talk examines the immediate effects of efficient error detection, which can lead to the cancellation of an ongoing erroneous action. The second talk explores the neural signatures of error processing and their links to outcomes not necessarily directly tied to mistakes. The third talk delves into individual differences, investigating how error processing relates to perfectionism. The fourth and fifth talks focus on error adjustment, offering insights respectively into affective mechanisms and into its contribution to arithmetic learning in developmental samples.
In conclusion, by providing a stage for diverse themes and methodologies in the study of error processing, this symposium set itself the task of promoting an exchange between different approaches and points of views.
Submission 341
Tracking the Development of Post-Error Slowing in Arithmetic: Longitudinal Patterns from Childhood to Adolescence
SymposiumTalk-05
Presented by: Eveline Jacobs
Eveline Jacobs 1, Shiva Taghizadeh 2, Stephan E. Vogel 2, Bert De Smedt 1, Elien Bellon 1
1 University of Leuven, Belgium
2 University of Graz, Austria
Adaptive post-error adjustments are critical for learning and performance. They allow individuals to modify their behavior after making a mistake with the goal to improve task outcomes. These adjustments are typically studied in highly controlled laboratory tasks, such as Flanker or Stroop tasks. Much less is known about how people implement post-error adjustments in ecologically relevant academic contexts, such as arithmetic, where such adjustments may reflect strategic, metacognitive processes. Moreover, their developmental trajectory remains underexplored, leaving questions about how children of various ages and adolescents differ in their capacity to adapt following errors unanswered. The present longitudinal study examined post-error slowing (PES) during arithmetic performance across three age groups: 7-8-year-olds (n = 114), 10-11-year-olds (n = 102), and 13-14-year-olds (n = 99). Participants completed the same arithmetic task at two time points, approximately one year apart. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal results indicated reliable PES across all age groups, with a gradual decrease in magnitude throughout the primary school years. Although PES was consistently observed, its relationship with arithmetic performance was weak and limited to the youngest age group, suggesting that the functional significance of PES in arithmetic may be age-dependent. By examining PES in arithmetic, this study extends the investigation of post-error adjustments beyond laboratory paradigms, offering new insights into how children and adolescents adapt to mistakes in real-world academic tasks and how these processes develop with age.