Jost Kerstin, Wendt Mike, Luna-Rodriguez Aquiles, Löw Andreas, Jacobsen Thomas
Department of Psychology, Brandenburg Medical School, Neuruppin, Germany.
Faculty of Human Sciences, Medical School Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Psychol Res. 2019 Mar;83(2):297-307. doi: 10.1007/s00426-019-01149-7. Epub 2019 Feb 2.
Electrophysiological recording in a temporal flanker task (i.e., distractors preceding the targets) has demonstrated that distractor processing is adjusted to the overall utility of the distractors. Under high utility, that is, distractors are predictive of the target/response, distractors immediately activate the corresponding response (as indicated by the lateralized readiness potential, LRP). This activation has been shown to be markedly postponed when the target predictably occurs delayed. To investigate the occurrence and time course of distractor-related response activation under conditions of unpredictable target onset, we randomly varied the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between distractors and targets and recorded the distractor-evoked LRP. When the distractor utility was high, an LRP occurred shortly after distractor presentation. In case of a long SOA the time course of this LRP was characterized by a drop back to baseline and a subsequent re-activation that reached a substantial level before target onset. These results suggest that distractor processing is characterized by sophisticated adjustments to experienced utility and temporal constraints of the task as well as by further control processes that regulate premature response activation.
在时间侧翼任务（即干扰项先于目标出现）中进行的电生理记录表明，干扰项的处理会根据干扰项的整体效用进行调整。在高效用情况下，也就是说，干扰项能够预测目标/反应，干扰项会立即激活相应的反应（如侧化准备电位，LRP所示）。当目标可预测地延迟出现时，这种激活已被证明会显著推迟。为了研究在目标起始不可预测的情况下与干扰项相关的反应激活的发生情况和时间进程，我们随机改变干扰项和目标之间的刺激起始异步性（SOA），并记录干扰项诱发的LRP。当干扰项效用较高时，在干扰项呈现后不久就会出现LRP。在长SOA的情况下，这个LRP的时间进程的特点是回落至基线，随后重新激活，在目标出现之前达到相当的水平。这些结果表明，干扰项处理的特点是对任务的经验性效用和时间限制进行复杂的调整，以及通过进一步的控制过程来调节过早的反应激活。
