In recent years, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been shown to be involved in response monitoring, including error and conflict monitoring. However, animal and neurophysiological studies show that the ACC is part of a larger network involved in early stages of learning. Electrophysiological studies show that error monitoring can be indexed in humans and is observed as the error-related negativity (ERN) in the response-locked event related potential (ERP). In this paper, we frame the significance of the ERN within the context of early stage learning such that the construct of ACC function is relevant to both humans and animals.