The neural consequences of flip-flopping: the feedback-related negativity and salience of reward prediction.

Research suggests that the feedback-related negativity (FRN) is only sensitive to expectancy when the prediction violation is salient. To further examine this issue, we asked participants to guess which of two virtual doors hid 5 cents. Prior to and after making their guess, participants were asked whether or not they expected to win. We extracted four conditions based on subjects' predictions before and after their choice of door: (1) win/win, (2) lose/lose, (3) win/lose, and (4) lose/win. Results revealed that the FRN was largest on trials in which subjects predicted they were not going to win and then changed their minds and predicted that they were going to win (i.e., the lose/win condition). Together with previous FRN results and findings in the area of regret and decision making, we suggest that the FRN reflects a context-sensitive signal that integrates information about current and past actions, thoughts, and emotions.