Post-error adjustments depend causally on executive attention: Evidence from an intervention study.

Detecting and correcting execution errors is crucial for safe and efficient goal-directed behavior. Despite intensive investigations on error processing, the cognitive foundations of this process remain unclear. Based on the presumed relation between executive attention (EA) and error processing, we implemented a seven-day EA intervention by adopting the Posner cueing paradigm to test the potential causal link from EA to error processing in healthy adults. The experimental group (high EA, HEA) was trained on the Posner cueing paradigm, with a ratio of invalid cue (IC) trials to valid cue (VC) trials of 5:1 and a corresponding ratio of 1:1 in the active control group (low EA, LEA). We found that the EA intervention improved EA across intervention sessions. Critically, after the EA intervention, the HEA group showed that post-error accuracy (PEA) was restored to the same level as the post-correct accuracy (in comparison with the LEA group). However, post-error slowing and the flanker effect were not modulated by the EA intervention. Furthermore, we observed that the changes in the accuracy of VC trials positively predicted the changes in PEA and that the two groups were classified according to the changes in PEA with a 61.3% accuracy. Based on these results, we propose that EA causally drives error processing. And the capabilities of the "actively catch" more attention resources and the automatic mismatch processing developed after EA intervention is transferable to error processing, thereby directly resulting in the gains in post-error adjustments. Our work informs the potential cognitive mechanisms underlying this causal link.

Timing characteristics of reactive and proactive emotion regulation.

The dual mechanisms of control (DMC) framework is important for portraying two temporally distinct modes of cognitive control. In parallel with this model, understanding emotion regulation (ER) from a dual-mechanism perspective becomes plausible since cognitive control is a crucial element of ER. The present study characterized reactive and proactive ER based on a dual mechanisms framework to identify their distinct temporal dynamics using electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. The reappraisal cue, compared with the watch-cue and no-cue conditions, evoked a larger fronto-central P3a magnitude, suggesting that participants could adaptively distribute their attention resources to prepare for strategy use. To track the cognitive effort that supports the ER process, we measured the frontal late positive potential (LPP). The results indicated that the reactive group, compared with the proactive group, used more effort to complete the reappraisal task when participants were subjected to decreased negative-emotional experiences to the same degree. Furthermore, decoding analysis showed that proactive ER starts earlier than reactive ER. These findings highlight the advantages of proactive ER. Further understanding of the modes of ER will help elucidate the control mechanisms underlying ER, which can then be applied to a variety of conditions, such as alcoholism, gambling, and drug addiction, to avert self-regulation failures caused by negative emotions.