Not all errors are alike : modulation of error-related neural responses in musical joint action

Anita Paas, Giacomo Novembre, Claudia Lappe, Peter E. Keller

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

During joint action, the sense of agency enables interaction partners to implement corrective and adaptive behaviour in response to performance errors. When agency becomes ambiguous (e.g. when action similarity encourages perceptual self– other overlap), confusion as to who produced what may disrupt this process. The current experiment investigated how ambiguity of agency affects behavioural and neural responses to errors in a joint action domain where self–other overlap is common: musical duos. Pairs of pianists performed piano pieces in synchrony, playing either the same pitches (ambiguous agency) or different pitches (unambiguous agency) while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded for each individual. Behavioural and event-related potential results showed no effects of the agency manipulation but revealed differences in how distinct error types are processed. Self-produced ‘wrong note’ errors (substitutions) were left uncorrected, showed post-error slowing and elicited an error-related negativity (ERN) peaking before erroneous keystrokes (pre-ERN). In contrast, self-produced ‘extra note’ errors (additions) exhibited pre-error slowing, error and post-error speeding, were rapidly corrected and elicited the ERN. Other-produced errors evoked a feedback-related negativity but no behavioural effects. Overall findings shed light upon how the nervous system supports fluent interpersonal coordination in real-time joint action by employing distinct mechanisms to manage different types of errors.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)512-524
Number of pages13
JournalSocial Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Volume16
Issue number5
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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