The Influence Of Attention Resource On Error Processing

Attention and error behavior play important roles in our life, people are very familiar with them. However, very few people care about that what kind of processing mechanism lies behind them and how they interact with each other.There are few studies of this kind in the field of mental health education.The current study is a basic research, and it appears difficultly to apply in this field. But it has great application value on the children of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, brain injury patients, drug addicts, alcoholics and residue man.Largely research predecessors conducted on error processing, but few people pay attention to the influences of the resource to error processing. On this basis, this paper further examines the impact of attention state on the error processing.By combining the Flanker task and attentional load task, the current study investicates how attention influences the error processing on the time course using the ERP technology. Flanker task and attention load task are executed at the same time. We controlled the difficulty of the attentional load task operating the available attention resources in order to analyze the influences of attention resources on the error processing. Behavioral results show that the reduction of attention resources during the process of the task would increase individual's reaction time. Individuals' reaction speed significantly faster with having no attentional load than those have attentional load. Although individuals' reaction time undering low load condition have a trend of that less than the reaction time of individuals', who have high load, but the difference is not significant. EEG data reveals that Ne is modulated by the attention resources during the execution of the tasks,but not be a flexible indicator, which indicates that Ne reflexes a relatively low cognitive level in the error processing. According to what the Pe data showed, its earlier amplitudes are not sensitive to attention resources distribution. Obviousely, its amplitudes turned out significantly differences to the changes of the attentional resouces during the middle and later stages, indicating a gradually improvement of the cognitive level. In general, the result shows that the error processing is a controlling process, ERN and Pe may reflect the different aspects of the error processing.