Orienting to errors with and without immediate feedback

Abstract

A slow-down in reaction time (RT) after committing an error is a well-known effect. Recently, Notebaert and colleagues (Notebaert et al., 2009; Núñez Castellar, Kuhn, Fias, & Notebaert, 2010) suggested that posterror slowing is a reaction to the infrequent nature of errors. After infrequent errors, posterror slowing was observed but after infrequent correct trials, postcorrect slowing was observed. These data were obtained in a paradigm with trial-by-trial feedback. In this study we tested whether posterror slowing was similar with and without immediate feedback. We manipulated the overall accuracy parametrically per condition (50%, 70%, and 90% accuracy) and predicted an increase in posterror slowing as the accuracy increased. This linear effect was observed with and without immediate feedback. The data are interpreted in terms of an orienting response towards unexpected events.