Citation

Papera M, Richards A. Conscious. Cogn. 2017; 54: 72-88.

Affiliation

Mace Experimental Research Laboratories in Neuroscience (MERLiN), Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, London WC1E 7HX, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.concog.2016.12.010

PMID

28190673

Abstract

When engaged in a demanding task, individuals may neglect unexpected visual stimuli presented concomitantly. Here we use a change detection task to show that propensity to inattention is associated with a flexible allocation of attentional resources to filter and represent visual information. This was reflected by N2 posterior contralateral (N2pc) and contralateral delay activity (CDA) respectively, but also during high-order reorienting of attentional resources (known as anterior directing attention negativity, ADAN).

RESULTS show that differences in noticing and failing to notice unexpected stimuli/changes are associated with different patterns of brain activity. When processing (N2) and working memory (CDA) capacities are low, resources are mostly allocated to small set-sizes and associated with a tendency to filter information during early low-level processing (N2). When resources are high, saturation is obtained with larger set-sizes. This is also associated to a tendency to select (N2) and reorient resources (ADAN) to maintain extra information (CDA).

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Capacity limits; Change detection; Flexible attentional deployment; Inattentional blindness; Prefrontal control