| Summary: | Although post-error
slowing and the ``hot hand'' (streaks of good performance) are both types of
sequential dependencies arising from the differential influence of success and
failure, they have not previously been studied together. We bring together
these two streams of research in a task where difficulty can be controlled by
participants delaying their decisions, and where responses required a degree
deliberation, and so are relatively slow. We compared performance of unpaid
participants against paid participants who were rewarded differentially, with
higher reward for better performance. In contrast to most previous results, we
found no post-error slowing for paid or unpaid participants. For the unpaid
group, we found post-error speeding and a hot hand, even though the hot hand is
typically considered a fallacy. Our results suggest that the effect of success
and failure on subsequent performance may differ substantially with task
characteristics and demands. We also found payment affected post-error
performance; financially rewarding successful performance led to a more
cautious approach following errors, whereas unrewarded performance led to
recklessness following errors.
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