Dear Michael, 

here is a paper with the desired answer:

Biol Psychol. 2014 Feb;96:86-93. 

The impact of cognitive control, incentives, and working memory load on the P3 responses of externalizing prisoners.

Baskin-Sommers AR, Krusemark EA, Curtin JJ, Lee C, Vujnovich A, Newman JP

Decision Making, the P3, and the Locus Coeruleus–Norepinephrine System

Sander Nieuwenhuis

Gary Aston-Jones

Jonathan D. Cohen

Psychological Bulletin 2005, Vol. 131, No. 4, 510 –532

Thanks a lot, Beatrice! I also found the Polich, 2007 paper very helpful (which was cited in both references you sent..

Polich, J. (2007). Updating P300: an integrative theory of P3a and P3b. Clinical Neurophysiology: Official Journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology, 118(10), 2128–2148. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2007.04.019

Thanks again!

Michael

Dear Michael,

with regard to your more general question, we used the ERN in a number of studies to assess cognitive control. The ERN is often seen as an index of error or conflict detection. The ERN even occurs when people watch or hear other people making an error.

Thanks for your response, Niels! I listed N2 because it reflects the error-related negativity response, but I didn't know it was elicited even by vicariously watching/knowing an error. Interesting! -perhaps reflecting a mirror-neuron type of response?

More recently, I am starting to delve into the alpha and the the negative slow wave literature, which has been used to measure the stimulus retention period on working memory tasks.

We found a "mirror"-ERN even for verbal errors:

Ganushchak, L. Y., & Schiller, N. O. (2010). Detection of speech errors in the speech of others: An ERP study. NeuroImage, 49, 3331-3337.

Very interesting! Ill download the paper. Thanks again for sharing!

This was a very interesting study, Niels. I like that you employed a more ecologically valid measure to assess the phonological ERN.

The results suggest that the early N2 and N4 components are elicited for the early error trials, while the later semantically-driven P6 component was elicited most for the correct trials. This shows a nice depiction of the temporal stream within basic language processing. Are you planning to also investigate the time-frequency dynamics as well? -Thanks

Although Lesya (Ganushchak) and I talked about that at some point, we haven't pursued this. It's a long time ago we did this experiment... I could try to dig out the data - do you have specific suggestions for a time-frequency analysis? - Thanks a lot.

In particular, I was thinking of post-stimulus onset alpha-band activity to assess the semantically relevant information for the correct trials (compared to incorrect), and also compare incongruent trials with theta-band activity after stimulus onset to assess attentional allocation.

Here is a paper I always reference (see below) with respect to making predictions about the on-task dynamics for alpha-band activity. I am currently working on conducting these type of analyses but on a working memory task, but could be applied to any task.

Klimesch, W. (2012). Alpha-band oscillations, attention, and controlled access to stored information. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(12), 606–617. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.10.007