Psychiatric Symptom Severity and Performance Monitoring: Intraindividual Variability in Neural Responses and Behavioral Adjustments to Errors

Performance monitoring involves evaluating actions and adjusting behavior accordingly. Atypical neural and behavioral indices of performance monitoring are commonly observed in individuals with psychopathology, raising the possibility that psychiatric symptoms may disrupt the link between error-related neural activity and subsequent behavioral adjustment. However, neural and behavioral indices of performance monitoring are often examined separately, leaving trial-level event-related brain potential (ERP) coupling with behavior poorly understood. The present study examined whether previous-trial error-related ERP components predicted current-trial behavior (i.e., response time [RT], accuracy) and whether these relationships varied by self-reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms. In a college student sample (N=247), larger previous-trial error-related negativity (ERN), an index of early error monitoring, predicted longer RTs. In contrast, larger previous-trial error positivity (Pe), an index of later error awareness, predicted higher current-trial accuracy. Internalizing and externalizing symptom scores did not robustly moderate these ERP-behavior relationships or consistently predict behavioral adjustments. These findings suggest that trial-level coupling between error-related ERP components and behavioral adjustment showed no robust evidence of differing across levels of self-reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms within the observed range. More broadly, the results highlight the value of examining performance monitoring as an integrated neural-behavioral process rather than as isolated neural or behavioral indices.