Abstract
Because the auditory system is particularly useful in monitoring the environment, previous research has examined whether task-irrelevant, auditory distracters are processed even if subjects focus their attention on visual stimuli. This research suggests that attentionally demanding visual tasks decrease the auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) to simultaneously presented auditory distractors. Because a recent behavioral study found that high visual perceptual load decreased detection sensitivity of simultaneous tones, we used a similar task (n = 28) to determine if high visual perceptual load would reduce the auditory MMN. Results suggested that perceptual load did not decrease the MMN. At face value, these nonsignificant findings may suggest that effects of perceptual load on the MMN are smaller than those of other demanding visual tasks. If so, effect sizes should differ systematically between the present and previous studies. We conducted a selective meta-analysis of published studies in which the MMN was derived from the EEG, the visual task demands were continuous and varied between high and low within the same task, and the task-irrelevant tones were presented in a typical oddball paradigm simultaneously with the visual stimuli. Because the meta-analysis suggested that the present (null) findings did not differ systematically from previous findings, the available evidence was combined. Results of this meta-analysis confirmed that demanding visual tasks reduce the MMN to auditory distracters. However, because the meta-analysis was based on small studies and because of the risk for publication biases, future studies should be preregistered with large samples (n > 150) to provide confirmatory evidence for the results of the present meta-analysis. These future studies should also use control conditions that reduce confounding effects of neural adaptation, and use load manipulations that are defined independently from their effects on the MMN.
Highlights
The ability to focus on task-relevant events is critical for goal-directed behavior
Do the present findings show that the effect of perceptual load on the mismatch negativity (MMN) is smaller than that of other, similar visual task demands? According to null-hypothesis significance testing, it may be argued that our study did not find significant effects whereas most previous research apparently did [22,23,24,25,26]
Because the MMN has been studied extensively, there is an abundance of studies that could be used to evaluate effects of different paradigms and the role of potential moderators of the MMN
Summary
The ability to focus on task-relevant events is critical for goal-directed behavior. This focus on task-relevant events increases the risk of missing events that may not be task-relevant but are still important. While somebody is in a grocery store looking for apples, the person will respond to the ringing of his or her own mobile phone [1] and to that of somebody else’s, despite the fact that responding is not relevant for purchasing apples. While responding to task-irrelevant environmental cues may not be useful in the context of ones’ goals, it is often unknown whether and when important information may be presented. Hearing seems useful for this task, because unlike vision, is not restricted to a location in space
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