| Abstract: | Electrophysiological studies have utilized event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate neural processes related to the evaluation of the outcome of behavioral performance or to the evaluation of external feedback. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) in brain potentials has been shown to be sensitive to information indicating monetary loss or negative feedback. Since monetary loss usually indicates both the consequence of previous performance and the reward value of stimuli, it is controversial whether the FRN reflects the cognitive process of error detection per se and/or the motivational/affective process related to the subjective evaluation of the error. This study manipulated the motivational/affective significance of negative feedback by penalizing errors in a context-dependent way in a line judgment task. Participants could lose more money in the loss incentive condition or win less money in the win incentive condition if their subsequent judgment of line segments was less accurate, whereas they could receive performance feedback but without monetary incentive in the neutral condition. Results showed that the size of the FRN effect as well as the size of the P300 effect, as assessed by comparing brain responses to the error trials with the responses to the correct trials, increased linearly over the loss, neutral, and win conditions, suggesting that the FRN is sensitive to the motivational/affective evaluation of the performance outcome. |
