The late positive components of the human EEG in a signal detection task

Abstract

In 1971, Hillyard, Squires, Bauer and Lindsay using human subjects in a signal detection task, obtained a prominent late positive component (LPC) of the EEG only in the Hit category of responses. They concluded that the LPC reflects the subject's degree of certainty that a signal has occurred. In contrast the present study observed the LPC in the Hit, Miss, and Correct Rejection categories of responses, supporting the hypothesis that the LPC is a correlate of uncertainty reduction and does not directly depend on the physical presence of the signal.