Executive attention, an underlying mechanisms enabling self-regulation, can be behaviorally indicated by post-error slowing (PES) – a delay in reaction time following an error. PES develops during early childhood – plausibly shaped by genetic and environmental factors. We tested whether mothers’ and children’s PES predicted their post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms during a real-life stressful situation, and how each one’s PTSD symptoms moderated the other’s. Ninety-five kindergarten-aged children and mother pairs participated. In T1, participants’ PES was measured during a laboratory task. About 1.5 years afterwards, six months after a national traumatic event, mothers reported their own and their child’s PTSD symptoms (T2). Key findings show that for mothers with high PTSD symptoms, children with more developed PES at T1 showed less PTSD symptoms at T2. In contrast, for mothers with low PTSD symptoms, children’s PES was unrelated to their PTSD symptoms. For mothers of children with high PTSD symptoms, those with less developed PES at T1 showed high PTSD symptoms at T2. Mothers of children with low symptoms showed no such relation. The models explained 61.1% of children’s and 51% of mothers’ PTSD symptoms. These findings provide evidence for the protective effect of self-regulation against PTSD, and the mutual dyadic moderating effects of its manifestation.

Although post-error slowing and the “hot hand” (streaks of good performance) are both types of sequential dependencies arising from the differential influence of success and failure, they have not previously been studied together. We bring together these two streams of research in a task where difficulty can be controlled by participants delaying their decisions, and where responses required a degree deliberation, and so are relatively slow. We compared performance of unpaid participants against paid participants who were rewarded differentially, with higher reward for better performance. In contrast to most previous results, we found no post-error slowing for paid or unpaid participants. For the unpaid group, we found post-error speeding and a hot hand, even though the hot hand is typically considered a fallacy. Our results suggest that the effect of success and failure on subsequent performance may differ substantially with task characteristics and demands. We also found payment affected post-error performance; financially rewarding successful performance led to a more cautious approach following errors, whereas unrewarded performance led to recklessness following errors.

The cognitive control system matures gradually with age and shows age-related sex differences. To gain knowledge concerning error adaptation in familial high-risk groups, investigating error adaptation among the offspring of parents with severe mental disorders is important and may contribute to the understanding of cognitive functioning in at-risk individuals. We identified an observational cohort through Danish registries and measured error adaptation using an Eriksen flanker paradigm. We tested 497 7-year-old children with a familial high risk of schizophrenia (N = 192) or bipolar disorder (N = 116) for deficits in error adaptation compared with a control group (N = 189). We investigated whether error adaptation differed between high-risk groups compared with controls and sex differences in the adaptation to errors, irrespective of high-risk status. Overall, children exhibited post-error slowing (PES), but the slowing of responses did not translate to significant improvements in accuracy. No differences were detected between either high-risk group compared with the controls. Boys showed less PES and PES after incongruent trials than girls. Our results suggest that familial high risk of severe mental disorders does not influence error adaptation at this early stage of cognitive control development. Error adaptation behavior at age 7 years shows specific sex differences.

Post-error slowing (i.e., slowing of a response on correct trials following an error) is thought to reflect adaptive behavior that may be impaired in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The current study examined post-error slowing in children with ADHD and typically developing controls on two cognitive tasks. Fifty-one ADHD-Combined type, 53 ADHD-Inattentive type, and 47 controls completed a Choice Discrimination and Stop Signal Task with incentive and event rate manipulations. Linear mixed models were used to examine reaction times surrounding errors (trial-by-trial). Pre-error speeding and pre- to post-error slowing occurred on both tasks. Impaired post-error slowing was only present on the Choice Discrimination Task for the ADHD-Inattentive type. Post-error slowing is impaired in children with ADHD-Inattentive type, but not ADHD-Combined type, on a simple attention task. These findings highlight the importance of considering task demands and ADHD subtype when examining post-error slowing and also provide a novel approach to quantifying post-error slowing. (JINS, 2012, 18, 612–617)

A microanalysis of task events in a common go/no-go task was completed to examine how task events impact individual reaction times. Predictors of long reaction times were analyzed to better understand increased intra-individual variability (IIV) among children with ADHD compared with normal controls. Sixty-five children with ADHD and 65 normal controls matched on gender, ethnicity, and age completed a go/no-go task. Children across both groups were slower before and after omission errors than all other trials. They were also slower on the trial before successfully inhibiting their response to no-go trials. Children with ADHD exhibited a pronounced slowing on trials prior to omission errors and trials prior to successful inhibitions compared with the normal control group. Pre-error slowing in children with ADHD may represent the beginning stages of attentional disengagement that subsequently results in the absence of responding (i.e., errors of omission or successful inhibition). While these event-related increases in reaction time explain some of the increased IIV observed in children with ADHD, the removal of these trials did not remove the pronounced between-group differences in IIV, suggesting that additional unmeasured processes are contributing to IIV in children with ADHD. (JINS, 2010, 16, 138–147.)