Citation

Pritchard WS, Houlihan ME, Robinson JH. Brain Topogr. 1999; 12(1): 31-37.

Affiliation

Research and Development, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Winston-Salem, NC 27102, USA. pritchw@rjrt.com

Copyright

(Copyright © 1999, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

10582563

Abstract

PURPOSE: The most prevalent current view of the functional role of the P300 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is that it indexes strategic processing related to context updating. Using independent-components analysis (ICA), the present study examined the role of P300 in the tactical process of response selection. METHODS: In a task crossing manipulations of perceptual difficulty (PD) and response-selection difficulty (R-SD), ICA was employed to measure not only P300 latency, but its onset and duration as well. RESULTS: Increased PD delayed P300 latency and onset in parallel, while increased R-SD lengthened P300 duration. CONCLUSIONS: The latency and onset results suggest that the often-cited covariation of P300 latency with stimulus-evaluation time is secondary to effects on processing stages preceding P300. The results for duration indicate that P300 is involved in response selection, suggesting that it is not a unitary phenomenon. While P300's well-known relation to stimulus probability indicates a strategic role, our findings indicate a tactical role as well.

Language: en