Brain potentials reveal reduced attention and error-processing during a monetary Go/No-Go task in procrastination
- Procrastination is a self-regulatory problem of voluntarily and destructively delaying intended and necessary or personally important tasks. Previous studies showed that procrastination is associated with executive dysfunctions that seem to be particularly strong in punishing contexts. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study a monetary version of the parametric Go/No-Go task was performed by high and low academic procrastinators to verify the influence of motivational context (reward vs. punishment expectation) and task difficulty (easy vs. hard) on procrastination-related executive dysfunctions. The results revealed increased post-error slowing along with reduced P300 and error-related negativity (ERN) amplitudes in high (vs. low) procrastination participants-effects that indicate impaired attention and error-related processing in this group. This pattern of results did not differ as a function of task difficulty and motivation condition. However, when the task got more difficult executive attention deficits became evenProcrastination is a self-regulatory problem of voluntarily and destructively delaying intended and necessary or personally important tasks. Previous studies showed that procrastination is associated with executive dysfunctions that seem to be particularly strong in punishing contexts. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study a monetary version of the parametric Go/No-Go task was performed by high and low academic procrastinators to verify the influence of motivational context (reward vs. punishment expectation) and task difficulty (easy vs. hard) on procrastination-related executive dysfunctions. The results revealed increased post-error slowing along with reduced P300 and error-related negativity (ERN) amplitudes in high (vs. low) procrastination participants-effects that indicate impaired attention and error-related processing in this group. This pattern of results did not differ as a function of task difficulty and motivation condition. However, when the task got more difficult executive attention deficits became even more apparent at the behavioral level in high procrastinators, as indexed by increased reaction time variability. The findings substantiate prior preliminary evidence that procrastinators show difficulties in certain aspects of executive functioning (in attention and error processing) during execution of task-relevant behavior, which may be more apparent in highly demanding situations.…
| Author details: | Jarosław M. MichałowskiORCiD, Ewa Wiwatowska, Mathias WeymarORCiDGND |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75311-2 |
| ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
| Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33184299 |
| Title of parent work (English): | Scientific reports |
| Publisher: | Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature |
| Place of publishing: | London |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Date of first publication: | 2020/11/12 |
| Publication year: | 2020 |
| Release date: | 2023/03/31 |
| Tag: | Attention; Cognitive control; Motivation; Neurophysiology; Neuroscience; Psychology; Reward |
| Volume: | 10 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Article number: | 19678 |
| Number of pages: | 12 |
| Funding institution: | Cooperation Funding of the University of Potsdam (KoUP); National; Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki, NCN) [DEC-2017/27/B/HS6/03065] |
| Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Psychologie |
| DDC classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 50 Naturwissenschaften / 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik |
| 6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 60 Technik / 600 Technik, Technologie | |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Publishing method: | Open Access / Gold Open-Access |
| License (German): |  CC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International |
