A comparison of auditory and visual distraction effects: behavioral and event-related indices.
Infrequent task-irrelevant deviations in the frequency of a tone may distract our attention away from the processing of task-relevant tone duration. The distraction obtained in the auditory paradigm is reflected in prolonged reaction times in duration discrimination and in P3a. The P3a is followed by a late negative component, which may be related to a re-orienting process following distraction (RON, re-orienting negativity). The present study aimed at comparing effects of the auditory and a corresponding visual distraction paradigm. Distraction elicited a deviance-related negativity which revealed a modality-specific distribution. It was followed by P3a (350-ms post-stimulus) and by RON (500-ms post-stimulus). RON did not occur with long-duration visual stimuli indicating a difference in visual and auditory distraction. Moreover, the results suggest that in both tasks irrelevant deviants were detected by modality-specific processes which caused an attention shift.
Berti
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S
Institut für Allgemeine Psychologie, Universität Leipzig, Seeburgstr. 14-20, D-04103, Leipzig, Germany. berti@rz.uni-leipzig.de
Schröger
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E
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004585:Electrooculography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time