[en] Fischer et al. demonstrated that a centrally presented number can shift attention to the left/right when its magnitude is small/large. Two electrophysiological studies described these attentional effects as event-related potentials (ERPs) at centro-parietal sites. Since both studies used target detection tasks, it remains currently unknown whether similar results would be obtained with a discrimination task. We used ERPs to test whether digit cues also induce attention shifts when participants perform a feature-discrimination task on targets. ERPs were recorded whereas subjects discriminated the colour of lateral targets that were preceded by a central non-predictive digit. Analysis of cue-locked controlateral vs. ipsilateral ERP activity showed the emergence of early preparatory attention-directing components in parietal and frontal regions. Moreover, target-locked P1 components at occipito-parietal sites were significantly modulated by digit magnitude-target side congruency. These results demonstrate that irrelevant digit cues also bias sensory processing when embedded in a feature-discrimination task.
Disciplines :
Neurosciences & behavior
Author, co-author :
SCHULLER, Anne-Marie ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Education, Culture, Cognition and Society (ECCS)
HOFFMANN, Danielle ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Luxembourg Centre for Educational Testing (LUCET)
SCHILTZ, Christine ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Education, Culture, Cognition and Society (ECCS)
Language :
English
Title :
Shifts of spatial attention cued by irrelevant numbers: Electrophysiological evidence from a target discrimination task
Publication date :
April 2011
Event name :
18th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society