Subjects chose and pretended to steal one object from a box of nine. They then watched a visual display of verbal representations of objects including their chosen object or one of eight novel objects on each trial. They were told to count one of the novel objects and that although they were welcome to try to beat our test, they would be unable to avoid noticing the chosen object. P3 responses were obtained only to counted and to chosen objects in 7 of 10 subjects not eliminated for artifact or noncooperation.

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Subjects were allowed to choose an item to keep from nine items in a box. They then were shown one of nine words randomly selected on a display screen. One of these words described the chosen item, the others described novel items. The subjects were told to try not to react emotionally to any of the words, but to try to defeat this test of deception. It was found that large positive waves with latencies between 400 and 700 ms poststimulus were present in the ERPS to the chosen but not to the novel words.

Two experiments were performed in which we compared the effects of selected non-deviant versus categorically deviant stimuli on parietal P3 under a variety of conditions in which one, both, or neither stimulus was a target of an experimental task. Subjects were repeatedly presented with series of 8 numeric stimuli and 1 alphabetic (Deviant) stimulus. P3 amplitudes to target and nontarget Deviant stimuli were consistently and significantly larger than to other, non-deviant targets and nontargets, respectively. Nontarget Deviant stimuli evoked P3 amplitudes comparable to those evoked by low-probability non-deviant targets. The observed differences indicate that P3 amplitude is a sensitive indicator of perceived category differences, and that the effect of category deviance on parietal P3 amplitude is independent of task response classification (target or nontarget) and of response probability.

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