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Distraction of task‐relevant information processing by irrelevant changes in auditory, visual, and bimodal stimulus features: A behavioral and event‐related potential study
Author(s) -
Boll Sabrina,
Berti Stefan
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00803.x
Subject(s) - distraction , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , mismatch negativity , auditory stimuli , event related potential , cognitive psychology , audiology , vigilance (psychology) , electroencephalography , perception , neuroscience , medicine
Distractibility with auditory, visual, and bimodal stimulus changes was investigated using an audio‐visual distraction paradigm. Participants were asked to discriminate between equiprobable short and long audio‐visual stimuli. Infrequently, the auditory, the visual, or both parts of the stimuli changed. These rare deviations (deviants) were irrelevant for the actual task. The influence of the three types of deviant stimuli on the processing of task‐relevant information was assessed with behavioral and event‐related potential (ERP) measures assuming that bimodal deviants would lead to an increase in distraction. Behavioral and ERP results did not support this assumption, as reaction time (RT) prolongation and components amplitudes did not differ significantly for auditory and bimodal deviants. It is suggested that a maximal threshold of distraction accounts for these results. In addition, the processing of bimodal deviations was assessed. Audio‐visual interactions were found following modality‐specific deviance detection suggesting that integration only occurs with involuntary attention switching to task‐irrelevant changes.