University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.
University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2022 Sep 1;34(10):1972-1987. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01889.
The importance of paying attention to a task at hand is emphasized from an early age and extends throughout life. The costs of attentional focus, however, include the potential to miss important changes in the environment, so some process for monitoring nontask information is essential. In this study, a model of latent cognitive variables was applied to data obtained from a two-alternative forced-choice task where participants identified the longer of two sounds. Using an adaptive procedure task, accuracy was maintained at a higher or lower level creating two difficulties, and the sounds were heard either where frequency changes in the sound were rare or common (oddball and multistandard conditions, respectively). Frequency changes created stimulus-driven "distraction" effects in the oddball sequence only, and cognitive modeling (using the linear ballistic accumulator) attributed these effects to slowed accumulation of evidence about tone length on these trials. Concurrent recording of auditory ERPs revealed these delays in evidence accumulation to be related to the amplitude of N2 or mismatch negativity period and P300 response components. In contrast, the response time on trials after a rare frequency change was associated with increased caution in decision-making. Results support the utility of mapping behavioral and ERP measures of performance to latent cognitive processes that contribute to performance and are consistent with a momentary diversion of resources to evaluate the deviant sound feature and remodel predictions about sound.
从幼年时期开始，人们就被强调要集中注意力完成手头的任务，这种意识会贯穿人的一生。然而，集中注意力也有代价，可能会错过环境中的重要变化，因此需要有某种监测非任务信息的过程。在这项研究中，我们应用潜在认知变量模型来分析被试在一项二择一的强制选择任务中的数据，该任务要求被试辨别两个声音中较长的一个。使用自适应程序任务，在两种难度下（高和低），被试的准确率都保持在较高水平，两种难度下的声音分别来自频率变化较少和较多的环境（分别是奇异性和多标准条件）。只有在奇异性序列中，频率变化会产生刺激驱动的“分心”效应，而认知建模（使用线性弹道累加器）将这些效应归因于在这些试验中关于音长的证据积累速度减慢。同时记录听觉事件相关电位（ERP）表明，这种证据积累的延迟与 N2 或失匹配负波和 P300 反应成分的振幅有关。相比之下，在罕见频率变化后进行试验的反应时间与决策过程中谨慎程度的增加有关。结果支持将行为和 ERP 测量的表现映射到潜在认知过程的有效性，这些过程有助于表现，并与资源的短暂转移相一致，用于评估异常声音特征并重新预测声音。
