Error Monitoring Under Negative Affect: A Window into Maladaptive Self-Regulation Processes

Abstract

The ability to detect response errors and regulate behavior accordingly is an important component of self-regulation. Early error detection relies on the integrity of specific frontostriatal loops that register any mismatch between the actual and the expected action, and in turn foster enhanced cognitive control. However, this process is not immune to affective influences. More specifically, negative affect seems to sensitize the responsiveness of the early error-detection brain machinery. In this chapter, we review recent neurophysiological (electroencephalography (EEG)) and behavioral results shedding light on the dynamic interplay between early error monitoring and negative affect. These findings suggest that dissociable maladaptive self-regulation processes may arise during early error monitoring depending on the specific internalizing disorder. While high anxious individuals typically show overactive early error-detection brain processes, depressed patients show instead a blunted reactivity during error monitoring at a later stage. This dissociation could be accounted for by an impaired generation of the action’s predictive value in high anxious individuals versus an excessive self-referential processing in the case of depression. Altogether these results suggest that effects of negative affect on early error-monitoring brain processes are multiple and can reflect different alterations in core self-regulatory processes engaged during action monitoring.