Performance Monitoring and Error-related Brain Activity

Abstract

Everyone knows how easy it is to mistype words when under time pressure or when emotions run high, has felt the embarrassment of a slip of the tongue, or has had to clean up after adding water to a coffee maker twice or forgetting to replace a filter. These so-called slips of action are generally detected immediately and corrected without any additional feedback for the simple reason that the outcome of a slip violates the intention of the actor. In this respect, action slips differ from what are termed in the human factors/ergonomics literature mistakes, and which originate from incorrect assessment of a situation or failures to select an appropriate goal or means to achieve it. That is, mistakes can be seen as failures to select an appropriate plan, and slips as failures to execute such a plan (Fedota & Parasuraman, 2010).