RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Steady-state visually evoked potentials and feature-based attention: Pre-registered null results and a focused review of methodological considerations
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.08.31.275602
DO 10.1101/2020.08.31.275602
A1 Kirsten C.S. Adam
A1 Lillian Chang
A1 Nicole Rangan
A1 John T. Serences
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/03/2020.08.31.275602.abstract
AB Feature-based attention is the ability to selectively attend to a particular feature (e.g., attend to red but not green items while looking for the ketchup bottle in your refrigerator), and steady-state visually evoked potentials (SSVEPs) measured from the human electroencephalogram (EEG) signal have been used to track the neural deployment of feature-based attention. Although many published studies suggest that we can use trial-by-trial cues to enhance relevant feature information (i.e., greater SSVEP response to the cued color), there is ongoing debate about whether participants may likewise use trial-by-trial cues to voluntarily ignore a particular feature. Here, we report the results of a pre-registered study in which participants either were cued to attend or to ignore a color. Counter to prior work, we found no attention-related modulation of the SSVEP response in either cue condition. However, positive control analyses revealed that participants paid some degree of attention to the cued color (i.e., we observed a greater P300 component to targets in the attended versus the unattended color). In light of these unexpected null results, we conducted a focused review of methodological considerations for studies of feature-based attention using SSVEPs. In the review, we quantify potentially important stimulus parameters that have been used in the past (e.g., stimulation frequency; trial counts) and we discuss the potential importance of these and other task factors (e.g., feature-based priming) for SSVEP studies.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.