Better safe than sorry: Divergent error-related negativity and error positivity in shame-prone adolescents.

Background: The present study examines whether adolescents who are prone to shame show intense performance monitoring in order to avoid mistakes. Higher amplitudes of error-related negativity (ERN) or error positivity (Pe) are potential proxies to measure performance monitoring from a neurophysiological perspective. Depressive symptom severity has been found to correlate with increased ERN and Pe amplitudes. However, research on the influence of shame proneness on this correlation is lacking, although it is known that depression comes with greater shame proneness.

Methods: A total of 112 adolescent participants (61 inpatients with a clinical diagnosis of depression and 51 healthy volunteers) performed two rounds of the Eriksen flanker task. In one round, incorrect responses led to derogatory feedback, in the other round, correct responses led to encouraging feedback. ERN and Pe after incorrect responses were measured.

Results: Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed that after derogatory feedback, ERN-latencies were longer, also when controlling for shame-proneness. Shame-proneness and ERN-amplitudes correlated.

Limitations: Despite the methodological soundness of the present study, its strongest limitation lies in the lack of insight into the subjective level of shame after derogatory feedback.

Conclusion: The results are discussed in light of punishment sensitivity of shame-prone adolescents. Future research is needed to gain greater insight into the relationship between shame proneness and punishment sensitivity.