Effects of self-evaluation on the P300 event-related potential.
The effects of self evaluation on the P300 event-related potential (ERP) were explored with 56 participants (16 men, 40 women; M age = 23.4 yr., SD = 1.2) across three conditions. The conditions included (1) a standard ERP auditory oddball discrimination between a random target (15% occurrence) and standard stimuli (85% occurrence), (2) the oddball task followed by the additional cognitive task of maintaining a mental count of the target tones, and (3) the oddball task followed by the additional cognitive task of self-evaluating whether they felt surprised by the current occurrence of the target tone. The added cognitive requirements for Conditions 2 and 3 required the subjects to maintain a cognitive readiness for the secondary stimulus-related task during their sensory discrimination response for the standard oddball task. During the self-evaluation condition, the P300 amplitude was significantly larger across all recording locations than the regular oddball condition and the cognitive count condition.
Psychology Division, Western Oregon University, Monmouth, OR 97361, USA. alexanj@wou.edu
Joel E
JE
Alexander
Ronald G
RG
Alexander
Ben
B
Crowson
Kelly
K
Machan
Carrie-Ann
CA
Hall
Denesa
D
Lockwood
Detre
D
Godinez
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology*; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012649:Self Concept