Neurocognition and Distraction
Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
Final Report Abstract
Imagine you are concentrating on the traffic on a busy city street to drive your car safely when suddenly you hear the siren of an ambulance. This unexpected novel sound involuntarily attracts your attention and interferes with performance in the task at hand. In a series of experiments we tested whether this type of distraction involves a spatial shift of attention and what role alpha power plays in that context. We measured behavioral data and magnetoencephalographic alpha power during crossmodal paradigms - each combining an exogenous cueing task and a distraction task. In each trial, a task-irrelevant sound preceded a lateralized visual target (Experiment 1 and 3) or an lateralized auditory target (Experiment 2). The task-irrelevant sound was usually the same animal sound (i.e., standard sound). Rarely, it was replaced by an unexpected environmental sound – the so called deviant sound. Half of the deviants occurred on the same side as the target. The other half of the deviants occurred on the opposite side relative to the target. Either the location of the target (Experiment 1 and 2) or the orientation of the target (Experiment 3) was task-relevant. In Experiment 3 an additional cue was presented before the task-irrelevant sound. In different conditions that cue was or was not informative about the location of the upcoming deviant with the intention to reduce distraction via the informative cue. While in Experiment 1 and 2 we obtained new insights on distraction, the paradigm of Experiment 3 turned out to be less suitable to replicate the well known finding that distraction effects can be reduced when deviants are „announced“ via informative cues – thus, disqualifying Experiment 3 for studying the overall goal of the current project. However, as expected, in Experiment 1 and 2 responses were slower to targets that followed a deviant compared to a standard. Crucially, in Experiment 1 this distraction effect was mitigated by the spatial relationship between the targets and the deviants. That is, responses were faster when visual targets followed deviants on the same versus different side, indexing a spatial shift of attention. In Experiment 1 and 2, this was further corroborated by a posterior alpha power modulation that was higher in the hemisphere ipsilateral (vs. contralateral) to the location of the attention-capturing deviant. We linked this alpha power lateralization to a spatial attention bias. Overall, our data support the contention that spatial shifts of attention contribute to deviant distraction.
Publications
- (2018, July). Novel sounds cause an involuntary shift of spatial attention – Indices from reaction time and magnetoencephalographic data, 2nd Salzburg Mind-Brain Annual Meeting (SAMBA), Salzburg, Austria
Weise, A., Hartmann, T., Parmentier, F., Ruhnau, P., & Weisz, N.
- (2018, Sept). Novel sounds cause an involuntary shift of spatial attention – Indices from reaction time and magnetoencephalographic data, Neuroscience Day, Christian Doppler Medical Center, Salzburg, Austria
Weise, A. Hartmann, T., Parmentier, F., Ruhnau, P., & Weisz, N.
- (2019, July). Alpha power as a neural signature of involuntary spatial attention?, 3rd Salzburg Mind-Brain Annual Meeting (SAMBA), Salzburg, Austria
Weise, A., Hartmann, T., Parmentier, F., Ruhnau, P., & Weisz, N.
- (2021, July). Linking posterior alpha power increases to involuntary spatial attention, 3rd Salzburg Mind-Brain Annual Meeting (SAMBA), Salzburg, Austria
Weise, A., Hartmann, T., Parmentier, F., Weisz, N., & Ruhnau, P.
- (2021, June). Linking posterior alpha power increases to involuntary spatial attention, 46th annual conference Psychologie und Gehirn (PUG), Salzburg, Austria
Weise, A., Hartmann, T., Parmentier, F., Weisz, N., & Ruhnau, P.
- (2023). Auditory representations for long lasting sounds: Insights from event-related brain potentials and neural oscillations. Brain and Language, Vol. 237. 2023, 105221.
Weise, A., Grimm, S., Maria Rimmele, J., & Schröger, E.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2022.105221) - (2023). Involuntary shifts of spatial attention contribute to behavioral crossmodal distraction—Evidence from oscillatory alpha power and reaction time data. Psychophysiology, Early View (Online Version of Record before inclusion in an issue), e14353
Weise, A., Hartmann, T., Parmentier, F., Weisz, N., & Ruhnau, P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.14353)
