Thumbs Down, Thumbs Down, Thumbs Down : Does the Feedback-Related Negativity (FRN) Habituate?

Abstract: The feedback-related negativity (FRN) is a negative event-related potential (ERP) component associated with the presentation of task feedback. The possibility that the FRN may habituate has been briefly mentioned in previous research (Garrido Chaves et al., 2020), but not yet been actively investigated. Thus, the current study is the first one to explicity investigate the possibility of short-term (across trials) and long-term (across blocks) habituation effects on the FRN. This was done by using electroencephalography (EEG) and a time-estimation paradigm during which participants were tasked with guessing the duration of one second. Following each estimate, participants were presented with either positive or negative visual feedback (however, only trials with negative feedback were included in the subsequent statistical analysis). It was hypothesized that mean FRN amplitude would decrease, i.e. habituate, upon increased exposure to negative feedback. Contrary to the expected effect, repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests revealed a stong, significant sensitization effect of FRN mean amplitude in the short-term comparison. However, there appeared to be multiple confounds involved, which made these results ambigous and difficult to interpret. No significant results were found for the long-term comparison, although the ERP waveforms suggested that there might be a (non-significant) habituation effect. This effect may become significant provided a greater sample size. Replication with a greater sample size is thus required before any firm conclusions can be drawn.