Abstract
A basic process in regulating behavior that helps us to disentangle meaningful from distracting information is the binding of stimulus and response features into stimulus-response episodes or “event files”. Recent studies have shown that even irrelevant information is bound into event files; distractor repetition on the next trial can trigger the response encoded in this episode, which is indicated by faster reaction times. The present study was conducted to get further insight into the electrophysiological underpinnings of those distractor-based retrieval. For that, we analyzed the N2, a negative deflection in event-related potentials that has been associated with a multitude of processes occurring when relevant and irrelevant stimuli compete with each other within a given trial or even in sequences of trials. Our study showed that distractor which did not provide useful information regarding the required behavior led to more negative N2 amplitudes, whereas distractors that provide useful response-related information were associated with less negative N2 amplitudes. Our results are explained as an adaptive mechanism that helps to hedge against invalid stimulus-response-bindings before an error occurs to increase efficiency of human behavior.
Highlights
We know from every day experience that task-relevant, and distracting information influences our performance
Data are reported from 21 participants (10 female, age range 21–30; data were originally recorded from 25 participants, four of them were excluded from further analysis, two because there were too few trials in one of the relevant categories for a reliable N2 analysis, two because of uncorrectable artifacts.) To ensure high performance level needed for low error rates, all participants were students of medicine and experienced with long-lasting demanding tasks
There was a significant TARGET x DISTRACTOR interaction, F(1,20) = 7.24, p < .014, pη2 = .27. see Supplement S3 File or Table D in S1 File and Fig 2, showing that distractor repetition led to faster responses only for response repetition trials but not for response change trials; that is, we observed the typical effect pattern that is indicative of distractor-response binding and retrieval
Summary
We know from every day experience that task-relevant, and distracting information influences our performance. It is processed to some extent; sometimes it yields additional information which might be useful for goal-achievement. The exact nature of brain processes evolved to deal with important task-relevant details in an overwhelming magnitude of distraction is still highly debated. This paper aims to bring further insight into the behavioral and neurophysiological underpinnings of task-irrelevant information that sometimes, but not always is useful for the current task. Among the most often used tasks to examine processing of relevant in the presence of irrelevant information are variations of the classical Flanker task [1]: target stimuli are mapped to specific responses while distracting stimulus components call either for the same (= congruent trials) or different (= incongruent trials) responses.
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