RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Involuntary shifts of spatial attention contribute to behavioral crossmodal distraction - Evidence from oscillatory alpha power and reaction time data
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.06.29.161992
DO 10.1101/2020.06.29.161992
A1 Annekathrin Weise
A1 Thomas Hartmann
A1 Fabrice Parmentier
A1 Nathan Weisz
A1 Philipp Ruhnau
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/07/22/2020.06.29.161992.abstract
AB Imagine you are focusing on the traffic on a busy street to ride your bike safely when suddenly you hear an ambulance siren. This unexpected sound involuntarily captures your attention and interferes with ongoing performance. We tested whether this type of behavioral distraction involves a spatial shift of attention. We measured behavioral distraction and magnetoencephalographic alpha power during a crossmodal paradigm that combined an exogenous cueing task and a distraction task. In each trial, a task-irrelevant sound preceded a visual target (left or right). The sound was usually the same animal sound (i.e., standard sound). Rarely, it was replaced by an unexpected environmental sound (i.e., deviant sound). Fifty percent of the deviants occurred on the same side as the target, and 50% occurred on the opposite side. Participants responded to the location of the target. As expected, responses were slower to targets that followed a deviant compared to a standard, reflecting behavioral distraction. Crucially, this distraction was mitigated by the spatial relationship between the targets and the deviants: responses were faster when targets followed deviants on the same versus different side, indexing a spatial shift of attention. 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 suggest that this alpha power lateralization reflects a spatial attention bias. Overall, our data support the contention that spatial shifts of attention contribute to behavioral deviant distraction.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.