Answer Selection Process and Error Detection when Solving Simple Cognitive Tasks

The study is aimed at examining the process of erroneous and correct answers when solving simple cognitive tasks of the same type in the group of adolescents with normal intelligence and those with mild mental deficiency. To study the nature of making errors the author studied factors influencing the process of answer selection, such as conditions of stimulus presentation, stimuli categorical congruence, and unconscious error detection markers of various kinds. The study revealed that if adolescents with normal intelligence make mistakes they do it trying to do the task quickly, while adolescents with mild mental deficiency make mistakes because of the task difficulty and demonstrate a low level of mindfulness of making a mistake, and slow-up adjustment process after a correct answer. Depending on whether there being or not being mental deficiency, certain differences in the process of error detection and the influence of conditions of stimulus presentation were detected.