Department of Psychology & Research Institute of Health Sciences, Neuropsychology & Cognition Group, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Balearic Islands, Spain.
Balearic Islands Health Research Institute (IdISBa), Palma, Balearic Islands, Spain.
PLoS One. 2022 Sep 6;17(9):e0274188. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274188. eCollection 2022.
It has been established that participants performing a continuous categorization task respond significantly slower following the presentation of unexpected, task-irrelevant, auditory stimuli, compared to a repetitive (standard) sound. Evidence indicates that such distraction emerges because of the violation of sensory predictions. This has typically been studied by measuring the impact of replacing the repeated sound by a different sound on rare and unpredictable trials. Here, we examine the impact of a different type of violation: the mere omission of the standard sound. Capitalizing upon the recent finding that deviant sounds exert distinct effects on response times as a function of whether participants produced or withheld a response on the previous trial, we present the results of an experiment seeking to disentangle two potential effects of sound omission: deviance distraction and the removal of an unspecific warning signal. The results indicate that deviant sound and the unexpected omission of the standard sound impact response times through, at least partially, distinct mechanisms. Deviant sounds affect performance by triggering the orienting of attention towards a new sensory input. Sound omissions, in contrast, appear to affect performance in part because responses no longer benefit from an unspecific warning signal to prepare for action.
已经确定，与重复（标准）声音相比，参与者在呈现意外的、与任务无关的听觉刺激后，执行连续分类任务的反应速度会显著减慢。有证据表明，这种分心是由于违反了感官预测而产生的。这通常通过测量在罕见和不可预测的试验中用不同的声音代替重复声音对反应时间的影响来研究。在这里，我们研究了另一种类型的违反：仅仅省略标准声音。利用最近的发现，即偏差声音会根据参与者在前一个试验中是做出反应还是抑制反应而对反应时间产生不同的影响，我们进行了一项实验，旨在区分标准声音的缺失的两种潜在影响：偏差干扰和消除非特定的警告信号。结果表明，偏差声音和标准声音的意外缺失会通过至少部分不同的机制影响反应时间。偏差声音通过触发注意力朝向新的感官输入来影响性能。相比之下，声音缺失似乎会影响性能，部分原因是响应不再受益于特定的警告信号来准备行动。
