
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.
Male, Perceptual Defense, post-error, cognitive control, visual search, Emotional Adjustment, Neuropsychological Tests, Anger-superiority effect; Emotion; Faces; Posterror slowing; Threat; Female; Humans; Male; Neuropsychological Tests; Emotional Adjustment; Facial Recognition; Perceptual Defense; Reaction Time; Experimental and Cognitive Psychology; Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); Behavioral Neuroscience, Reaction Time, Humans, Female, Facial Recognition
Male, Perceptual Defense, post-error, cognitive control, visual search, Emotional Adjustment, Neuropsychological Tests, Anger-superiority effect; Emotion; Faces; Posterror slowing; Threat; Female; Humans; Male; Neuropsychological Tests; Emotional Adjustment; Facial Recognition; Perceptual Defense; Reaction Time; Experimental and Cognitive Psychology; Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); Behavioral Neuroscience, Reaction Time, Humans, Female, Facial Recognition
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 8 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Average | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% |
