What causes post-correct slowing?

One of the most robust findings in the cognitive psychology literature is that participants are typically slower following an error (Rabbitt, 1966). According to cognitive control theories (e.g., Botvinick et al., 2001), such “post error slowing” is thought to reflect a strategic adjustment to encourage more careful behaviour and avoid future errors. Strikingly, under certain circumstances (for example, when errors are more frequent than correct responses), the opposite pattern can also be observed, and reaction times are slower following a correct response (e.g., Van ‘t Wout & Jarrold, 2022). The cause of such “post correct slowing” remains poorly understood, though proposed explanations include variations in the response-stimulus interval (RSI; e.g., Jentz & Dudschig, 2009), the ratio of correct to incorrect responses (Notebaert et al., 2009), and time taken to update the task-set representation (Van ‘t Wout & Jarrold, 2022). This experiment will investigate some of these proposed explanations, in order to elucidate the cognitive mechanisms that underpin post-error processing.