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Automatic detection of violations of statistical regularities in the periphery is affected by the focus of spatial attention: A visual mismatch negativity study
Author(s) -
File Domonkos,
Czigler István
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
european journal of neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.346
H-Index - 206
eISSN - 1460-9568
pISSN - 0953-816X
DOI - 10.1111/ejn.14306
Subject(s) - mismatch negativity , oddball paradigm , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , negativity effect , audiology , event related potential , visual field , cognitive psychology , electroencephalography , neuroscience , medicine
Abstract We investigated the effect of spatial attention on an event‐related potential signature of automatic detection of violations of statistical regularities, namely, the visual mismatch negativity ( vMMN ). To vary the task‐field and the location of vMMN ‐related stimulation, in the attentional field the stimuli of a tracking task with a steady and a moving (target) bar were presented. The target stimuli of the task appeared either relatively close or far from a passive (task‐irrelevant) oddball or equiprobable sequence at the lower part of the screen. Stimuli of the oddball sequence were shapes tilted either 45° (standard, p = 0.8) or 135° (deviant, p = 0.2), while the equiprobable sequence consisted of additional three shapes with identical number of lines to the oddball stimuli. Deviant stimuli in close proximity to a continuously attended field elicited larger vMMN than similar stimuli farther away from the stimulus field. In the condition with a smaller distance between the field of the tracking task and the vMMN ‐related field, the deviant stimuli and the vMMN was followed by a posterior positivity. According to these results, spatial attention modulates vMMN and is capable of initiating further processing of the deviant stimuli.