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Rhesus macaques slow down after errors, but do not perform better

Research · Behaviour

People often take longer to respond after making a mistake. This behaviour, called post-error slowing, has also been observed in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). A new study tested whether it occurs when the monkeys respond in different ways, and whether the amount of slowing depends on the kind of error.

Three macaques completed tasks that involved making a series of decisions. They responded either with eye movements, which researchers tracked, or by touching a screen. The monkeys responded more slowly after errors in both types of task. The amount of slowing varied with the error type; in the eye-tracking task, task structure and context also affected it.

The slower responses did not improve task performance in either response mode. The researchers suggest that post-error slowing combines cognitive and non-cognitive reactions to mistakes, shaped by the error type and task context. Its variation across situations resembles the flexibility reported in humans, supporting the use of macaques to investigate how responses to errors change with context.

Sources and image credit

  1. Nonhuman primates exhibit error type-dependent post-error slowing across modalitiesPrimærkildens tilgjengelige sammendrag oppgir studieart, antall aper, responsmåter og hovedfunn.
  2. PubMed record for Nonhuman primates exhibit error type-dependent post-error slowing across modalitiesIndekserer bioRxiv-preprinten og oppgir publiseringsdato, DOI og sammendrag.

Image: Giles Laurent / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Representative photograph. · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

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