Sleep deprivation and error negativity: A review and reappraisal

Performance monitoring is an aspect of cognitive control that is crucial to optimal task performance. Error monitoring is a major domain of performance monitoring. In everyday life, people commit action slips that indicate losses of intentional control. Reason (1979) argues that “central to the notion of error is the failure of ‘planned actions’ to achieve a desired outcome” (p. 69). The key factor mediating action slips is the lack of close monitoring of ongoing activity by attentional control, even in a well-learned and familiar situation. In addition, these lapses also occur when exercising any well-learned behavior in daily life, particularly in states of reduced arousal and attention, such as during periods of extended wakefulness or sleep deprivation. Learning from errors is also critical to almost every newly learned psychomotor and cognitive behavior. When errors are detected during or after their commission, based on self-generated feed-forward and feedback information and/or externally provided feedback information, post-error remedies and adjustments become critical to achieving the intended goal.