Hans S. Schroder

On the relationship between anxiety and error monitoring: a meta-analysis and conceptual framework

Research involving event-related brain potentials has revealed that anxiety is associated with enhanced error monitoring, as reflected in increased amplitude of the error-related negativity (ERN). The nature of the relationship between anxiety and error monitoring is unclear, however. Through meta-analysis and a critical review of the literature, we argue that anxious apprehension/worry is the dimension of anxiety most closely associated with error monitoring. Although, overall, anxiety demonstrated a robust, “small-to-medium” relationship with enhanced ERN (r = −0.25), studies employing measures of anxious apprehension show a threefold greater effect size estimate (r = −0.35) than those utilizing other measures of anxiety (r = −0.09). Our conceptual framework helps explain this more specific relationship between anxiety and enhanced ERN and delineates the unique roles of worry, conflict processing, and modes of cognitive control. Collectively, our analysis suggests that enhanced ERN in anxiety results from the interplay of a decrease in processes supporting active goal maintenance and a compensatory increase in processes dedicated to transient reactivation of task goals on an as-needed basis when salient events (i.e., errors) occur.

Mind Your Errors Evidence for a Neural Mechanism Linking Growth Mind-Set to Adaptive Posterror Adjustments

How well people bounce back from mistakes depends on their beliefs about learning and intelligence. For individuals with a growth mind-set, who believe intelligence develops through effort, mistakes are seen as opportunities to learn and improve. For individuals with a fixed mind-set, who believe intelligence is a stable characteristic, mistakes indicate lack of ability. We examined performance-monitoring event-related potentials (ERPs) to probe the neural mechanisms underlying these different reactions to mistakes. Findings revealed that a growth mind-set was associated with enhancement of the error positivity component (Pe), which reflects awareness of and allocation of attention to mistakes. More growth-minded individuals also showed superior accuracy after mistakes compared with individuals endorsing a more fixed mind-set. It is critical to note that Pe amplitude mediated the relationship between mind-set and posterror accuracy. These results suggest that neural mechanisms indexing on-line awareness of and attention to mistakes are intimately involved in growth-minded individuals’ ability to rebound from mistakes.

The Role of Implicit Theories in Mental Health Symptoms, Emotion Regulation, and Hypothetical Treatment Choices in College Students

Abstract Beliefs about how much people can change their attributes—implicit theories—influence affective and cognitive responses to performance and subsequent motivation. Those who believe their attributes are fixed view setbacks as threatening and avoid challenging situations. In contrast, those who believe these attributes are malleable embrace challenges as opportunities to grow. Although implicit theories would seem to have important mental health implications, the research linking them with clinical applications is limited. To address this gap, we assessed how implicit theories of anxiety, emotion, intelligence, and personality related to various symptoms of anxiety and depression, emotion-regulation strategies, and hypothetical treatment choices (e.g., medication versus therapy) in two undergraduate samples. Across both samples, individuals who believed their attributes could change reported fewer mental health symptoms, greater use of cognitive reappraisal, and were more likely to choose individual therapy over medication. These findings suggest that implicit theories may play an important role in the nature and treatment of mental health problems.

Sex moderates the association between symptoms of anxiety, but not obsessive compulsive disorder, and error‐monitoring brain activity: A meta‐analytic review

Sex differences in cognition and emotion are particularly active areas of research. Much of this work, however, focuses on mean-level differences between the sexes on cognitive and/or emotional variables in isolation. In this article, we are primarily concerned with how sex affects associations between cognition and emotion, or cognition-emotion interactions. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on a gap in our understanding of how sex affects the relationship between error monitoring, a core component of cognitive control, and anxiety. Using meta-analysis, we show that the relationship between symptoms of anxiety and a neurophysiological marker of error monitoring-the error-related negativity (ERN)-is significantly greater in women than men such that women, but not men, with higher levels of anxiety show a larger ERN. This sex difference held true across studies of anxiety-specific symptoms but not studies of obsessive-compulsive symptoms. These findings underscore the need to consider sex in studies of anxiety and the ERN as well as support growing evidence indicating that obsessive-compulsive problems are distinguishable from other anxiety-specific problems across multiple levels of analysis. Overall, we conclude that ignoring sex in studies of cognition-emotion interactions is unacceptable. Rather, future research that continues to tackle questions related to sex differences in associations between cognition and emotion will more likely lead to advancements in basic and applied sciences of relevance to health and human behavior.

Improving the study of error monitoring with consideration of behavioral performance measures.

The field of error monitoring is one of the richest and fastest growing research areas within human neuroscience. In particular, applied researchers in clinical psychology and psychiatry are excited about the potential for this research to inform models and treatments of psychopathology. Neuroimaging techniques including event-related brain potential (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have highlighted the fascinating ways in which the brain detects and responds to errors and how these processes go awry in clinical populations. However, an increased focus on the brain activity itself has resulted in a neglect of behavioral performance, including the important adjustments that follow mistakes. Here, we suggest that the consideration of task performance and, in particular, post-error behavioral adjustments (PEBAs), substantially improves our understanding of the function of error-related brain activity. Critically, this entails controlling for behavioral differences and reporting multiple PEBAs, especially post-error accuracy. We urge researchers to consider the full range of behavior in order to foster a richer understanding of how individuals detect and bounce back from their mistakes.

Sending mixed signals: worry is associated with enhanced initial error processing but reduced call for subsequent cognitive control

Worry is reliably associated with overactive action-monitoring processes as measured by the error-related negativity (ERN). However, worry is not associated with error-related behavioral adjustments which are typically used to infer increased cognitive control following errors. We hypothesized that this disconnect between overactive action monitoring and unimproved post-error adjustments in worriers is the result of reduced functional integration between medial and lateral prefrontal regions during generation of the ERN, understood to have an important role in mediating controlled processing. To test this, we examined ERN amplitude and interchannel phase synchrony extracted from scalp-recorded electroencephalographic data during error processing in 77 undergraduates who performed a Flankers task. Correlational and path analytic results demonstrated that worry was related to both an enlarged ERN and reduced phase synchrony. Although not directly related to post-error behavioral adjustments, results also revealed that worry was indirectly related to poor post-error adjustments through its association with reduced phase synchrony. Therefore, worry seems to affect multiple components of the action-monitoring system. It is related not just with the initial response to the error, but also with the transmission of information between networks involved in cognitive control processes.

Evaluating the Domain Specificity of Mental Health–Related Mind-Sets

Mind-sets are beliefs regarding the malleability of self-attributes. Research suggests they are domain-specific, meaning that individuals can hold a fixed (immutability) mind-set about one attribute and a growth (malleability) mind-set about another. Although mind-set specificity has been investigated for broad attributes such as personality and intelligence, less is known about mental health mind-sets (e.g., beliefs about anxiety) that have greater relevance to clinical science. In two studies, we took a latent variable approach to examine how different mind-sets (anxiety, social anxiety, depression, drinking tendencies, emotions, intelligence, and personality mind-sets) were related to one another and to psychological symptoms. Results provide evidence for both domain specificity (e.g., depression mind-set predicted depression symptoms) and generality (i.e., the anxiety mind-set and the general mind-set factor predicted most symptoms). These findings may help refine measurement of mental health mind-sets and suggest that beliefs about anxiety and beliefs about changeability in general are related to clinically relevant variables.

The case for compensatory processes in the relationship between anxiety and error monitoring: a reply to Proudfit, Inzlicht, and Mennin.

(1) We clarify that our view does in fact place motivation and emotion centerstage in the anxiety-ERN relationship. (2) We reiterate that there is currently little compelling evidence that an enlarged ERN in anxious individuals reflects “the disposition to respond more strongly to uncertain threat” (Proudfit et al., 2013, p. 1). (3) We emphasize that our analysis focuses specifically on the functional significance of the elevated ERN characteristic of many anxious individuals.

Meta-analysis and psychophysiology: A tutorial using depression and action-monitoring event-related potentials

Meta-analyses are regularly used to quantitatively integrate the findings of a field, assess the consistency of an effect and make decisions based on extant research. The current article presents an overview and step-by-step tutorial of meta-analysis aimed at psychophysiological researchers. We also describe best-practices and steps that researchers can take to facilitate future meta-analysis in their sub-discipline. Lastly, we illustrate each of the steps by presenting a novel meta-analysis on the relationship between depression and action-monitoring event-related potentials - the error-related negativity (ERN) and the feedback negativity (FN). This meta-analysis found that the literature on depression and the ERN is contaminated by publication bias. With respect to the FN, the meta-analysis found that depression does predict the magnitude of the FN; however, this effect was dependent on the type of task used by the study.

Neurophysiological evidence of an association between cognitive control and defensive reactivity processes in young children

Highlights • ERN, Pe, startle reflex, and parietal asymmetry were measured in young children.• Reduced ERN was related to a larger startle and greater right parietal activity.• Age predicted smaller startle, larger ERN, and better behavioral performance.• Age did not moderate the association between ERN and startle.• Age did not moderate the association between ERN and parietal asymmetry.