A different kind of pain: affective valence of errors and incongruence.

People hiss and swear when they make errors, frown and swear again when they encounter conflicting information. Such error- and conflict-related signs of negative affect are found even when there is no time pressure or external reward and the task itself is very simple. Previous studies, however, provide inconsistent evidence regarding the affective consequences of resolved conflicts, that is, conflicts that resulted in correct responses. We tested whether response accuracy in the Eriksen flanker task will moderate the effect of trial incongruence using affective priming to measure positive and negative affect. We found that responses to incongruent trials elicit positive affect irrespective of their accuracy. Errors, in turn, result in negative affect irrespective of trial congruence. The effects of conflicts and errors do not interact and affect different dimensions of affective priming. Conflicts change the speed of evaluative categorisation while errors are reflected in categorisation accuracy. We discuss the findings in light of the "reward value and prediction" model and the "affect as a feedback for predictions" framework and consider the possible mechanisms behind the divergent effects.

Blame everyone: Error-related devaluation in Eriksen flanker task.

Preferences are determined not only by stimuli themselves but also by the way they are processed in the brain. The efficacy of cognitive processing during previous interactions with stimuli is particularly important. When observers make errors in simple tasks such as visual search, recognition, or categorization, they later dislike the stimuli associated with errors. Here we test whether this error-related devaluation exists in Erisken flanker task and whether it depends on the distribution of attention. We found that both attended stimuli (targets) and ignored ones (distractors) are devaluated after errors on compatible trials but not incompatible ones. The extent of devaluation is similar for targets and distractors, indicating that distribution of attention does not significantly influence the attribution of error-related negative affect. We discuss this finding in light of the possible mechanisms of error-related devaluation.