Temporal Error Monitoring: Does Ownership of Errors Matter?

Error monitoring is defined as the ability to report one's own errors without relying on external feedback. Although this ability is mostly investigated within binary choice tasks in perceptual domains, recent studies showed that participants can keep track of their error magnitude and direction in their temporal, spatial, and numerical judgments. The current study investigates the extent to which temporal error monitoring relies on an internal generative process that leads to the to-be-judged first-order timing performance. We hypothesized that if the endogenous factors have a critical role in the temporal error monitoring, one should be able to monitor self-committed but not others' timing errors. In two independent experiments, we showed that confidence ratings tracked error magnitude only in self-generated behaviors but error directionality judgments were more precise in other-committed behaviors. These effects were replicated in Experiment 3, where the motor aspects of responding were controlled for. These results point at both the functional and disruptive role of endogenous timing processes in different aspects of timing errors.