Understanding the the relationship between diminished ERN response and externalizing proneness is an important priority because the ERN appears to reflect an underlying process of high functional relevance to externalizing disorders—namely, a reduced ability to recognize errors in performance and to adjust behavior accordingly. The current study contributes to this objective by examining externalizing proneness in relation to another brain-based measure of performance monitoring, believed to be related to the ERN—the feedback-related negativity (FRN, or f-ERN; Gehring & Willoughby, 2002; Holroyd & Coles, 2002; Miltner, Braun, & Coles, 1997). The FRN is a negative-polarity ERP component that occurs following the presentation of explicit feedback signaling poor performance or loss outcomes.1 The FRN has been posited to reflect an underlying neural process similar to the ERN (i.e., a common performance-monitoring process that relies heavily on engagement of the anterior cingulate cortex; Gehring & Willoughby, 2002; Holroyd & Coles, 2002; Luu, Tucker, Derryberry, Reed, & Poulsen, 2003). However, whereas the ERN reflects an endogenous (internally-cued) error detection or action monitoring process, the FRN reflects the processing of external performance cues. As discussed
