关键词: 错误后调整效应, 社会评价任务, 正性评价, 负性评价

Abstract: Error is inevitable, but don't repeat mistakes. Human beings have to adopt effective measures to adjust experienced errors, this phenomenon is called post-error adjustment effect. Post-error slowing is a typical behavioral performance trigged by errors, manifesting as slower responses after committing errors. Previous studies mainly focus on the influence of result evaluation or result feedback on post-error adjustment effect. However, participants may receive evaluation from others before performing the task, how the comments from others influences post-error adjustment effect remains unclear. Thus, the investigation on this issue may provide new insights into the understanding of the influence of social information on post-error adjustment effect. To achieve the above aim, participants were recruited to execute the social evaluation task based on the Stroop task (Experiment 1) and the Flanker task (Experiment 2). In the Experiment 1, positive and negative evaluations were between-subject factor. Moreover, to better verify the role of social evaluation, a control condition (non-evaluation condition) was conducted. In the Experiment 2, positive and negative evaluations were within-subject factor. Moreover, to eliminate the potential confounding factor--- self-efficacy, the subjects were assigned to high self-efficacy group and low self-efficacy group. Before the experiment, participants were instructed to pay close attention to the comments from others about you. In the positive condition, three short sentences were presented in the evaluation screen, such as “you are good”, “you are fantastic”, and “you can do it”. In the negative condition, another three short sentences were presented in the evaluation screen, such as “you are not good”, “you are very poor”, and “you cannot do it”. In the non-evaluation condition, a list of star strings was presented in the evaluation screen. As a result, in the Experiment 1 and 2, the post-error adjustment effect was no difference under positive and negative evaluation conditions, suggesting that the positive and negative evaluation had the same effect on the post-error adjustment and were not affected by the experimental task. Additionally, Experiment 1 found that the mean reaction time (RT) in trials following correct trials was significantly slower in the positive and negative conditions than that in the non-evaluation condition. However, the mean RT in trials following errors in the positive and negative conditions was comparable with that in the non-evaluation condition. These findings suggested that social evaluation accelerated the post-error behavior. Experiment 2 found that the post-error adjustment was no difference between high and low self-efficacy groups, suggesting current results were not influenced by subjects’ self-efficacy. In sum, Experiment 1 and 2 proved through different experimental tasks that social evaluation could affect post-error behavior adjustment, but the influence of social evaluation on post-error adjustment effect was not regulated by social evaluation valence. The positive and negative pre-task social evaluation had the same effect on post-error adjustment. Moreover, compared to the non-evaluation condition, slower RT was observed in the post-correct trials under positive and negative evaluation conditions, but this case was not observed in the post-error trials. This finding suggested that social evaluation promoted the post-error adjustment and realized the behavioral optimization following errors.

Key words: post-error adjustment effect, social evaluation task, positive evaluation, negative evaluation