title: Involuntary attentional capture by speech and non-speech deviations: a combined behavioral-event-related potential study.
abstract: This study applied an auditory distraction paradigm to investigate involuntary attention effects of unexpected deviations in speech and non-speech sounds on behavior (increase in response time and error rate) and event-related brain potentials (ΔN1/MMN and P3a). Our aim was to systematically compare identical speech sounds with physical vs. linguistic deviations and identical deviations (pitch) with speech vs. non-speech sounds in the same set of healthy volunteers. Sine tones and bi-syllabic pseudo-words were presented in a 2-alternative forced-choice paradigm with occasional phoneme deviants in pseudo-words, pitch deviants in pseudo-words, or pitch deviants in tones. Deviance-related ERP components were elicited in all conditions. Deviance-related negativities (ΔN1/MMN) differed in scalp distribution between phoneme and pitch deviants within phonemes, indicating that auditory deviance-detection partly operates in a deviance-specific manner. P3a as an indicator of attentional orienting was similar in all conditions, and was accompanied by behavioral indicators of distraction. Yet smaller behavioral effects and prolonged relative MMN-P3a latency were observed for pitch deviants within phonemes relative to the other two conditions. This suggests that the similarity and separability of task-relevant and task-irrelevant information is essential for the extent of attentional capture and distraction.
authors.affiliation: Department for Psychology, University of Leipzig, Seeburgstr. 14-20, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. reiche.stud@gmail.com
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Reiche
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hartwigsen
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Widmann
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Saur
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schröger
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bendixen
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult