An important issue that can affect the magnitude of the FRN across a task is whether or not the task involves learning. Recent work by Muller and colleagues (Muller, Moller, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Munte, 2005) has shown that as participants learn the mapping of choices and outcomes, they come to rely less on the external feedback and more on internal error awareness. Both theEppinger et al. (2009) andHämmerer et al. (2011) studies involved tasks that required learning a stimulus–response mapping. In these types of tasks, participants initially rely on the external feedback, but over learning they are thought to rely more on internal error awareness, which tends to reduce the size of the FRN (see Muller et al., 2005; Santesso et al., 2011). Indeed,Eppinger et al. (2009) andHämmerer et al. (2011) speculated that the children in their studies showed larger FRNs than older groups due to a greater reliance on external feedback cues as opposed to internal representations of feedback emerging from learning.Santesso et al. (2011) suggest that because there may be a shift across development from reliance on external feedback
