Cognitive control after distraction: Event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) dissociate between different processes of attentional allocation

Abstract

Attentional reallocation after a distracting event is an important function of cognitive control. This process is tapped by the reorienting negativity (RON) event-related brain potential. It was argued that the RON reflects orientation of attention to relevant information in working memory. To test this hypothesis participants performed an auditory duration discrimination task. The stimuli were presented in a frequent standard or a rare deviant pitch with deviants resulting in behavioral distraction. Participants accomplished this task under two conditions: In the refocus condition participants were asked to respond to every stimulus; in the reorient condition participants were instructed to ignore deviant stimuli and omit a reaction. The results suggest that different functions of attentional allocation are reflected by two RON subcomponents: the fast orientation of the focus of attention in working memory and a subsequent poststimulus evaluation process.

ERP correlates of auditory goal-directed behavior of younger and older adults in a dynamic speech perception task

“…Finally, the re-focussing of attention toward the task-relevant stimulus feature (indicated by the RON; [65,66,6]) was delayed in the older group, suggesting that the attention-switching mechanism took longer and that elderly required more time to overcome distraction than younger participants [8]. Specifically, the switch of attention away from the task-irrelevant change in spatial position back to the task-relevant word content took obviously more time in the older group.…”

“…The MMN ( [49]; for review, see [50]) is a correlate of pre-attentive deviance detection [48,68], the fronto-central P3a [27] reflects an involuntary attention-switching mechanism [21,27,43,64], and the RON [65,66] is assumed to indicate re-allocation of attention to the relevant task after distraction by a deviant features (for empirical evidence: [6,38]). …”

Behavioral and evoked potential measures of distraction in 5-year-old children born preterm

“…Here RON was observable in both groups, indicating that the processes reflected by RON are functional in 5-year-old children. Although the specific functional significance has to be defined, the frontocentral RON is elicited in situations where attention has to be reoriented after distraction (Schröger and Wolff, 1998), but is not when no such reorienting is required (Berti, 2008).…”

Exploiting temporal predictability: Event-related potential correlates of task-supportive temporal cue processing in auditory distraction

“…Such distracters elicited an N2b and an enhanced P3a in comparison to the condition when distracter events did not require such a task-change, which may indicate that P3a, at least in part, is involved in task-switching or task-set activation (Berti, 2008;Hölig and Berti, 2010, for similar suggestions see Dien, Spencer and Donchin, 2004;Barcelo et al, 2006;Horváth, Winkler and Bendixen, 2008).…”

“…Finally, RON may reflect processes involved in the restoration of the task-optimal attention set after the distracting event (Berti, 2008;Schröger and Wolff, 1998a;Sussman, Winkler and Schröger, 2003).…”