Näätänen R, Michie P T
Biol Psychol. 1979 Mar;8(2):81-136. doi: 10.1016/0301-0511(79)90053-x.
Recent research on the effect of selective attention on the N1, component of the evoked potential is reviewed. These studies are based on the finding of Hillyard Hink, Schwent and Picton (1973) that this component is selectively enhanced in response to attended stimuli when a very rapid rate of stimulus delivery is used. On the basis of the subsequent set of experiments, the conditions and limits of the existence of the auditory 'N1 effect' are now quite clear. Moreover, this finding has been extended to somatosensory and visual modalities. In the present review a detailed examination of these studies has suggested a re-interpretation of the N1 effect. According to this reinterpretation, it is not a 'true' N1 component which is enhanced but the effect is produced by a summation of a negative shift with the evoked-potential wave form. Under some conditions such as those involving a very fast rate of stimulus delivery, this effect commences very early, making the N1 component appear larger. It is suggested that this shift reflects orienting to, and further processing of, an input found relevant in a preliminary sensory analysis. Topographical evidence for this kind of interpretation is provided by several studies. This negative shift is, hence, associated with voluntary attention. Some of the reviewed studies have described a rather similar negative shift as a correlate of involuntary attention to rare stimuli among the much more frequent, 'standard', stimuli.
本文综述了近期关于选择性注意对诱发电位N1成分影响的研究。这些研究基于希利亚德、欣克、施温特和皮克顿（1973年）的发现，即当以非常快的刺激呈现速率进行刺激时，该成分会对被注意的刺激产生选择性增强。基于随后的一系列实验，听觉“N1效应”存在的条件和局限性现在已经相当清楚。此外，这一发现已扩展到躯体感觉和视觉模态。在本综述中，对这些研究的详细考察提出了对N1效应的重新解释。根据这一重新解释，增强的并非“真正的”N1成分，而是由负向偏移与诱发电位波形叠加产生的效应。在某些条件下，如涉及非常快的刺激呈现速率时，这种效应开始得非常早，使得N1成分看起来更大。有人认为，这种偏移反映了对在初步感觉分析中发现相关的输入进行定向和进一步加工。几项研究提供了支持这种解释的地形学证据。因此，这种负向偏移与自愿注意相关。一些被综述的研究将一种相当类似的负向偏移描述为在更为频繁的“标准”刺激中对罕见刺激的非自愿注意的相关指标。
