Detecting and correcting partial errors: Evidence for efficient control without conscious access
Résumé
Appropriate reactions to erroneous actions are es-
sential to keeping behavior adaptive. Erring, however, is not
an all-or-none process: electromyographic (EMG) recordings
of the responding muscles have revealed that covert incorrect
response activations (termed “partial errors”) occur on a pro-
portion of overtly correct trials. The occurrence of such “par-
tial errors” shows that incorrect response activations could be
corrected online, before turning into overt errors. In the pres-
ent study, we showed that, unlike overt errors, such “partial
errors” are poorly consciously detected by participants, who
could report only one third of their partial errors. Two param-
eters of the partial errors were found to predict detection: the
surface of the incorrect EMG burst (larger for detected) and
the correction time (between the incorrect and correct EMG
onsets; longer for detected). These two parameters provided
independent information. The correct(ive) responses associat-
ed with detected partial errors were larger than the “pure-
correct” ones, and this increase was likely a consequence,
rather than a cause, of the detection. The respective impacts
of the two parameters predicting detection (incorrect surface
and correction time), along with the underlying physiological
processes subtending partial-error detection, are discussed.
Origine | Publication financée par une institution |
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