more equally across ability-relevant and learning-relevant information be-
cause both types of information are consistent with their learning goal of in-
creasing their knowledge.
Recently, we conducted an exploratory study in which we used electroen-
cephalography (EEG) to noninvasively monitor brain activity associated
with students’ attention to ability-relevant and learning-relevant feedback
during a challenging general knowledge retrieval task. In this task (see also
Butterfield & Mangels, in press), subjects’ answers to general information
questions were followed first by feedback indicating the accuracy of their re-
sponse (i.e., ability-relevant feedback: red if incorrect, green if correct), and
then by the correct answer to the question (i.e., learning-relevant feedback).
Each type of feedback was also preceded by a brief waiting period, thereby
providing a period during which we could assess anticipation of the different
kinds of information. To extract patterns of brain activity consistently associ-
ated with the processing of these different types of feedback, we constructed
event-related potentials (ERPs) that were time-locked to presentation of the
feedback. Previous research has delineated a set of ERP waveforms that are
correlated with anticipatory vigilance and orienting, including the stimulus-
related negativity (SPN; Brunia & van Boxtel, 2001) and frontal-P3 (Fried-
man, Cycowicz, & Gaeta, 2001). Our analysis revealed that these ERPs dif-
fered as a function of students’ theories of intelligence in a pattern that was
very much in line with our predictions.
When waiting for an event of motivational or affective significance that will
occur in the near future, a state of anticipatory vigilance is entered. This type of
anticipatory vigilance has been shown to elicit an SPN, a slow negative wave-
form that typically starts about one second before stimulus onset and increases
in amplitude as the significant event looms closer (e.g., Brunia & Damen, 1988;
Damen & Brunia, 1994; Ruchkin, Sutton, Mahaffey, & Glaser, 1986; Simons,
Ohman, & Lang, 1979). It is especially prominent in anticipation of perform-
ance feedback (Chwilla & Brunia, 1991; Damen & Brunia, 1994; Kotani &
Aihara, 1999), or stimuli with a strong positive (e.g., Simons, et al. 1979) or
negative valence (e.g., Bocker, Baas, Kenemans, & Verbaten, 2001). Recently,
it has been suggested that the SPN reflects an attentional process that is tied to
a motivational-affective system in which the anterior cingulate cortex plays a
major role (Bocker, et al., 2001; Brunia & van Boxtel, 2001; Peterson, et al.,
1999). Thus, we predicted that the SPN would be modulated differently by the
different motivational goals of the entity and incremental theorists.
We found that both students with entity and incremental theories gener-
ated an SPN prior to the ability-relevant feedback suggesting that both were
motivated to generate a state of vigilance for this information. In contrast,
the SPN prior to the learning-relevant feedback (correct answer) was signifi-
cantly larger in students with an incremental theory compared to students
46 DWECK, MANGELS, GOOD