Motivation to do well enhances responses to errors and self-monitoring

Abstract

Humans are unique in being able to reflect on their own performance. For example, we are more motivated to do well on a task when we are told that our abilities are being evaluated. We set out to study the effect of self-motivation on a working memory task. By telling one group of participants that we were assessing their cognitive abilities, and another group that we were simply optimizing task parameters, we managed to enhance the motivation to do well in the first group. We matched the performance between the groups. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, the motivated group showed enhanced activity when making errors. This activity was extensive, including the anterior paracingulate cortex, lateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex. These areas showed enhanced interaction with each other. The anterior paracingulate activity correlated with self-image ratings, and overlapped with activity when participants explicitly reflected upon their performance. We suggest that the motivation to do well leads to treating errors as being in conflict with one's ideals for oneself.

Figure 1.

(a) In the n-back task a sequence of letters was presented on a screen. For each letter that they saw the participants pressed a button. If a current letter also appeared 3 letters back (the n − 3 runs) or one letter back (the n − 1 runs) the participant make a yes response; otherwise they made a no response. Each letter was presented for 500 ms. (b) Ratings given by participants in the 2 groups in answer to the question on how important it had been for them to perform well on the task. Group High_M rated significantly higher (P < 0.016) that it was important to perform well.

Figure 2.

Participants of Group High_M were told that the working memory capacity correlates with intelligence. On error trials Group High_M showed enhanced activation in medial frontal, lateral frontal and orbitofrontal cortex. The activations (errors vs. corrects) are shown for Group High_M and Group Low_M separately. The activation maps are taken from a threshold of P < 0.001 uncorrected at voxel level. The pattern of activation for Group High_M versus Group Low_M is significant at a set-level (P < 0.0001).

Figure 3.

The cluster on the medial wall represents error-related activity as seen when the data for Group High_M and Group Low_M are added together. The red cross represents the peak in the anterior paracingulate sulcus (10 46 36) that was significantly more active in Group High_M than Group Low_M on error trials. The anterior cluster does not overlap with the posterior cluster.

Figure 4.

There was an increased interaction between the anterior paracingulate sulcus and the right area 47 when Group High_M made errors as compared with Group Low_M. There were significant peaks of activity in the same regions when participants in Group High_M reflected on their own performance.

Figure 5.

There was a significant positive correlation between activity in the paracingulate peak (10 46 36) that was enhanced when Group High_M made errors, and self-image as rated by the participants. This correlation partialed out the effect of the ratings for motivation.