Error Processing Mechanism Of Clinical Perfectionists

In view of its close association to various pathological symptoms,clinicalperfectionism has given rise to abundant researches in the field of clinical psychology.A series of studies showed that characteristic cognitive styles of clinical perfectionismmay play a key role in the maintainance of clinical perfectionist’s symptoms,whichinclude dichotomous thinking,selective attention on mistakes,over generalization andso on.However,most studies concerning the cognitive styles of clinical perfectionistsare on the basis of scales until now,yet few neurophysiological evidence areprovided.To explore the cognitive styles of clinical perfectionists from the viw ofneurophysiology has important implications both theoretically and practically.Error processing is regarded as the awareness of errors and following remedialactions.Only when an individual is capable of monitoring his behaviour continuallyand take remedial actions for mistakes can he achieve his goal.As differences incognitive styles exist between clinical perfectionists and nonperfectionists,we proposethat they may apply distinct error processing mechanism.To test the hypothesis,clinical perfectionism scale and SCL-90were filled out by663university students,andERP were recorded during15subjects (7clinical perfectionists,8nonperfectionists)during performing a variant of probablistic learning task.The results of experimient are showed as follows1.Clinical perfectionists didn’t show significant difference with nonperfectionistson most behavioral variables,including reaction time,post error slowing,trials requiredto reach learning criterion and accuracy.2.2.The difference wave of ERN and CRN was significantly larger among clinicalperfectionists,suggesting that their hypervigilant action monitoring and selectiveattention to failure may lead to increased sensitivity to mistakes,which in turn causedgreater electrophysiological reactions after committing mistakes.3.For the clinical perfectionists, the pre-learning FRN was equivalent inamplitude for correct and incorrect feedback. Young adults with high levels of clinicalperfectionism demonstrate aberrant feedback monitoring characterized by a lack ofdifferentiation to the valence of feedback. This pattern of results may be indicative ofa cognitive bias in outcome prediction associated with clinical perfectionism.