Post-error speeding after threat-detection failure

Abstract

Cognitive control enables individuals to rapidly adapt to changing task demands. To investigate error-driven adjustments in cognitive control, we considered performance changes in post-error trials, when participants performed a visual search task requiring to detect 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 post-error adjustment than the failure to detect a nonthreatening target (happy or neutral face). Indeed, in three sets of experiments we found evidence of post-error speeding, in the first case, and of post-error slowing, in the second. Previous results indicate that a threatening stimulus can improve the effciency 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 post-error 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.