Early action error processing is due to domain-general surprise while later processing is error-specific

Abstract

The ability to adapt behavior after erroneous actions is one of the key aspects of cognitive control. Error commission typically causes people to slow down their subsequent actions (posterror slowing, PES). Recent work has challenged the notion that PES reflects adaptive, controlled processing and instead suggests that it is a side-effect of the surprising nature of errors. Indeed, human neuroimaging suggests that the brain networks involved in processing errors overlap with those processing error-unrelated surprise, calling into question whether there is a specific system for error processing in the brain at all. In the current study, we used EEG decoding and a novel behavioral paradigm to test whether there are indeed unique, error-specific processes that contribute to PES beyond domain-general surprise. Across two experiments in male and female humans (N = 76), we found that both errors and error-unrelated surprise were followed by slower responses when response-stimulus intervals were short. Furthermore, the early neural processes between error-specific and domain-general surprise processing showed significant cross-decoding. However, at longer intervals, which afforded additional processing time, only errors were still followed by post-trial slowing. Furthermore, this error specific PES effect was reflected in sustained neural activity that could be decoded from that associated with domain-general surprise, with the strongest contributions found at lateral frontal, occipital and sensorimotor scalp-sites. These findings suggest that errors and surprise initially share common processing, but that after additional processing time, unique, genuinely error-specific processes take over and contribute to behavioral adaptation.