New theories of monitoring in language production, regardless of their mechanistic differences, all posit monitoring mechanisms that share general computational principles with action monitoring. This perspective, if accurate, would predict that many electrophysiological signatures of performance monitoring should be recoverable from language production tasks. In this study, we examined both error-related and feedback-related EEG indices of performance monitoring in the context of a typing-to-dictation task. To disentangle the contribution of the external from internal monitoring processes, we created a condition where participants immediately saw the word they typed (the immediate-feedback condition) versus one in which displaying the word was delayed until the end of the trial (the delayed-feedback condition). The removal of immediate visual feedback prompted a stronger reliance on internal monitoring processes, which resulted in lower correction rates and a clear error-related negativity. Compatible with domain-general monitoring views, an error positivity was only recovered under conditions where errors were detected or had a high likelihood of being detected. Examination of the feedback-related indices (feedback-related negativity and frontocentral positivity) revealed a two-stage process of integration of internal and external information. The recovery of a full range of well-established EEG indices of action monitoring in a language production task strongly endorses domain-general views of monitoring. Such indices, in turn, are helpful in understanding how information from different monitoring channels are combined.

Response selection is often studied by examining single responses, although most actions are performed within an overarching sequence. Understanding processes that order and execute items in a sequence is thus essential to give a complete picture of response selection. In this study, we investigate response selection by comparing single responses and response sequences as well as unimanual and bimanual sequences. We recorded EEG while participants were typing one- or two-keystroke sequences. Irrespective of stimulus modality (visual or auditory), response-locked analysis revealed distinct contralateral and ipsilateral components previously associated with activation and inhibition of alternative responses. Unimanual sequences exhibited a similar activation/inhibition pattern as single responses, but with the activation component of the pattern expressed more strongly, reflecting the fact that the hand will be used for two strokes. In contrast, bimanual sequences were associated with successive activation of each of the corresponding motor cortices controlling each keystroke and no traceable inhibitory component. In short, the activation component of the two-keystroke sequence EEG pattern can be understood from the addition of activation components of single-stroke sequences; the inhibition of the hand not being used is only evidenced when that hand is not planned for the next stroke.