N2pc and PD to salient items with different relevance to the task
Creators: name: Manini, Greta
name: Martín-Arévalo, Elisa
name: Botta, Fabiano
name: Lupiáñez, Juan
name: Carlisle, Nancy
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Cognitive Neuroscience
subject: Life Sciences
subject: Cognitive Psychology
subject: Neuroscience and Neurobiology
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: In our previous study (https://osf.io/cwrua), we wanted to know how attention to a salient item changes based on its relevance to our task, and how it affects our performance depending on its relevance. We conducted an experiment in which we manipulated the proportion of salient distractors and target (i.e., a red letter between all white letters), in both feature(i.e., target letter among similar heterogeneous letters) and singleton (i.e., target letter among Os) search mode. This critical variable was manipulated within participants, with five different groups, to investigate the possible attentional sets triggered by the informativeness of the singleton distractor. The main goal of this manipulation was to change the salient item relevance to our task, so that for one group this color was completely irrelevant (no salient target) and in the other groups we increased the proportion of the salient target (25%, 50% or 75% of salient items), until presenting the salient item fully relevant (always the target). This manipulation allowed us to observe more quantitative effects of the salient item on attention, for example, the condition in which we observe a smaller or larger effect, or when we observe a benefit or a cost of its presence. But also, it was possible to see how the salient item interacted with the search mode, and how this interaction changed depending on its relevance. We expected to see an interaction between the relevance of the salient item and the search mode, predicting a larger impact of relevance in the feature search mode than in singleton detection mode. Because the observed results were generally as predicted, we could conclude that the effect of a salient item on attention changes depending on its relevance to the task; however, the behavioral data do not allow us to make a further qualitative difference of these changes. More specifically, in the feature search when the salient stimulus was never the target we expected faster responses when it was presented than when it was absent (Gaspar &amp; McDonald, 2014). However, we observed no differences, perhaps due to the salient distractor not being salient enough. Therefore, in the present study, we will increase the saliency of the salient item. Furthermore, we would like to explore how our attention to the target and to the distractor changes depending on how relevant the salient item is to our task, observing specific evoked potentials (ERP), therefore, seeking qualitative differences of the interaction. We will use two main components: N2pc and Pd. The first is a negative component that is observed in the region contralateral to where the target - or selected stimuli - is presented, and for this reason it is considered to reflect the place in space where attention is oriented for target selection (Eimer, 1996). The Pd component is characterized by positive activity in regions of the cortex contralateral to where the distractor - or ignored stimuli - is presented and is considered to reflect distractor inhibition/suppression (Gaspar &amp; McDonald, 2014). References Eimer, M. (1996). The N2pc component as an indicator of attentional selectivity. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 99(3), 225–234. https://doi.org/10.1016/0013-4694(96)95711-9 Gaspar, J. M., &amp; McDonald, J. J. (2014). Suppression of Salient Objects Prevents Distraction in Visual Search. 34(16), 5658–5666. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4161-13.2014 Gaspelin, N., &amp; Luck, S. J. (2018). Combined Electrophysiological and Behavioral Evidence for the Suppression of Salient Distractors. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30(9), 1265–1280. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01279